Rifts Character Generator

[kirerellim]

I'm not sure if too many Palladium Books Staff actually come on here, but if any do I'm rather curious.

Is there a reason why no Character Generator has been made in the last 20 years? Officially that is. It seems to me, with my admittedly basic knowledge of programming that there are several ways it could be done, without reveling important /important/ information from books, such as leaving out what skills do, what OOC bonus abilities are, etr, while still cutting out a lot of math like calculating bonuses from W.P. and skills that increase based on levels and stats.

I've done a considerable bit of searching online, and I see plenty of people willing to make something like this for free. I'm one of them, if I had the knowledge. Why hasn't Palladium taken someone up on that? Or at least relaxed the restriction a shade or two. I can't see how having such a generator would do anything but provoke interest in getting more books. It also would increase the number of players. As far as I'm can see, Rifts is a better rpg than most, with only one downside being that making characters, for GM and player alike is incredibly in depth, requiring much page flipping and obscure rule finding. Most of my players took one look at it and would have quit then if not for me helping with the character design(Read: doing for them) but they love the quick pace of combat and in depth feel to the role play. I love all the story ideas, making my life as a GM so much easier and interesting, no dry boredom I find in other RPG's.

So, Palladium, got any answers for me?

[masslegion]

I've created an excel spreadsheet. The skills have the base level + the IQ bonus + the level -1* the amount of extra % per level. And modify the minus to equal the level at which it was chosen.

This also works for every attribute that increases by a fixed amount. such as if ISP increase by +10/lvl.

if it increases by say a 1D6 per level Input that in the adjacent cell and in red letters.

I understand there are ways to make if, then statements and if, else, then statements. This would help with WP say between levels 1-3 the bonus is +1, lvls 4-6 is +2, but I'm jot that great which excel

[kaid]

One of the biggest problems is the sheer mass of occ's. Given they have not done any major version changes you are looking at decades of OCC's and RCC's. It would be an interesting but gigantic project. On a side note with the upcoming conversion for savage worlds the savage world system DOES have a number of free online character generation tools that are pretty slick to use.

[Blue_Lion]

Think it might be part of there piracy paranoia they may thing if they publish it people would no longer need the books. They do have a suggestion forums. There is also several companies that what they do is make charters generators for games.

[ShadowLogan]

One of the biggest problems is the sheer mass of occ's. Given they have not done any major version changes you are looking at decades of OCC's and RCC's. It would be an interesting but gigantic project. On a side note with the upcoming conversion for savage worlds the savage world system DOES have a number of free online character generation tools that are pretty slick to use.

This is a very good point. Any attempt at a character generator will have to address the sheer volume of character classes (Occupational, Racial, and what ever else might be in the mix from the past). Not to mention other bits extras (hardware/powers). And given that any new book is likely to introduce additional ones, I would have to say it would be very impractical. I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it would be impractical and it might fall on its face if one of the "new" stuff does something that wasn't done before or easily implemented in this character generator.

I think the best we can probably hope for is something like an automated Character sheet or one with fillable values that can handle some degree of calculations. The attribute bonus table hasn't changed much since 1E RT IINM. Skills calculations wouldn't be bad, but you are likely going to have to manual enter and class bonus (main, or Other/Related, race) since it would be impractical to cover it all. Skill modifiers from other skills should be doable, but again its a matter of keeping it up to date....

[The Beast]

I'm not sure if too many Palladium Books Staff actually come on here, but if any do I'm rather curious.

Is there a reason why no Character Generator has been made in the last 20 years? Officially that is. It seems to me, with my admittedly basic knowledge of programming that there are several ways it could be done, without reveling important /important/ information from books, such as leaving out what skills do, what OOC bonus abilities are, etr, while still cutting out a lot of math like calculating bonuses from W.P. and skills that increase based on levels and stats.

I've done a considerable bit of searching online, and I see plenty of people willing to make something like this for free. I'm one of them, if I had the knowledge. Why hasn't Palladium taken someone up on that? Or at least relaxed the restriction a shade or two. I can't see how having such a generator would do anything but provoke interest in getting more books. It also would increase the number of players. As far as I'm can see, Rifts is a better rpg than most, with only one downside being that making characters, for GM and player alike is incredibly in depth, requiring much page flipping and obscure rule finding. Most of my players took one look at it and would have quit then if not for me helping with the character design(Read: doing for them) but they love the quick pace of combat and in depth feel to the role play. I love all the story ideas, making my life as a GM so much easier and interesting, no dry boredom I find in other RPG's.

So, Palladium, got any answers for me?

Actually there was one that, AFAIK, was available on the Cutting Room Floor up until around 2007. The issues with it were that it was buggy, and obsolete by the time the next book was published. And until PB gets away from the cookie-cutter OCC system, that last part will always be a problem.

[kaid]

I'm not sure if too many Palladium Books Staff actually come on here, but if any do I'm rather curious.

Is there a reason why no Character Generator has been made in the last 20 years? Officially that is. It seems to me, with my admittedly basic knowledge of programming that there are several ways it could be done, without reveling important /important/ information from books, such as leaving out what skills do, what OOC bonus abilities are, etr, while still cutting out a lot of math like calculating bonuses from W.P. and skills that increase based on levels and stats.

I've done a considerable bit of searching online, and I see plenty of people willing to make something like this for free. I'm one of them, if I had the knowledge. Why hasn't Palladium taken someone up on that? Or at least relaxed the restriction a shade or two. I can't see how having such a generator would do anything but provoke interest in getting more books. It also would increase the number of players. As far as I'm can see, Rifts is a better rpg than most, with only one downside being that making characters, for GM and player alike is incredibly in depth, requiring much page flipping and obscure rule finding. Most of my players took one look at it and would have quit then if not for me helping with the character design(Read: doing for them) but they love the quick pace of combat and in depth feel to the role play. I love all the story ideas, making my life as a GM so much easier and interesting, no dry boredom I find in other RPG's.

So, Palladium, got any answers for me?

Actually there was one that, AFAIK, was available on the Cutting Room Floor up until around 2007. The issues with it were that it was buggy, and obsolete by the time the next book was published. And until PB gets away from the cookie-cutter OCC system, that last part will always be a problem.

The ironic thing is one of the biggest hurdles to making a rifts character generator is because nothing is very cookie cutter. For every few some what 'standard' OCC's you get others that diverge pretty wildly power/ability wise.

Something like savage worlds due to how the system is setup to be pretty stream lined and more cookie cutter in some ways makes it easier to plunk in a new books edges/skills and updating their character generators is pretty quick and painless. Most of the systems that have good character generator tools tend to be newer ones setup with that sort of thing in mind the rifts system predated those kinds of tools by years heck I remember being happy when I could finally find nice character sheets I could print out to fill in instead of having to make them myself in my word processing program.