Ways to speed up charter generation ?

[EzraCaleb]

Hello,
I know I am not a megaversal Ambasador but I figured if any one would have feed back on this It would most likely be you guys.

I found a game group at a college near were I live and got them to agree to play Rifts. The group has players that drop in and out typically there can be 3-6 people playing in a game. They are not familiar with palladium charter generation system. I only bring one copy of the core book with me, along with several relevant books.

So given that charter creation tends to take the most amount of time I came up with a idea to stream line it and reduce book lock.

The idea is charter generation hand outs that contain the list of skills by type and %, hand to hand table what stats mean and alignment as well as a step by step walk threw. That would serve as a general guide then once they pick a race and Occ make a copy of that page for them to use for charter creation. My goal is to limit the amount of time spent waiting on a book as well as flipping threw the book to pick skills.

Does this sound feasible, would it not violate any Palladium intellectual properties and is there anything else I should include in the hand out to speed up charter creation?

_________________
The Clones are coming you shall all be replaced, but who is to say you have not been replaced already.

Master of Type-O and the obvios.

Soon my army oc clones and winged-monkies will rule the world but first, must .......

I may debate canon and RAW, but the games I run are highly house ruled. So I am not debating for how I play but about how the system works as written.

[Zer0 Kay]

The player side of my GM shield has two panels for images related to the game (one is usually a map). One panel with character creation that takes up one sheet in font size 11 that covers most of that except the skills. I use a modified version of MadDogs skill compendium which you may be able to find on the internet (very comprehensive, I think they may have received a C&D order from PB). And pass that document around for skills. My fourth panel is taken up by my 'make energy weapon types matter page'. The character creation panel seems to stream line the basic character creation issues but the time and possible book lock as always, mostly comes from skill, power and equipment choices. The skill compendium reduces the skill choice issue. Good luck finding a power and equipment fix... if everyone is making something from a different book then it shouldn't be an issue.

[ITWastrel]

I built a custom character sheet with most of the skills, their percentages, and a checkbox to indicate primary or secondary skill. The list takes up the entire back of the sheet, split into two columns.

Chargen takes SO much less time checking boxes, even new players can get through skills in just a minute or two.

I mostly play HU, and the "select X from Y category" skill selection really benefits from a quick checklist.

There's also the option of making class-specific sheets° for your players. Take some time to edit a base sheet, listing all the permanent class abilities of each common OCC in your game.
Make sure to include level progression, abilities and bonuses gained above level 1, and any permanent character traits.
Do not include anything that requires a roll. Variable stats, such as "add 1d4x10 SDC" or "add 1d6 to X" can be made as a notation on the bottom of the page.

Also remember, these are sheets, not characters, and do not make any character choices. Unless you're locking in all Ley Line Walkers as elves, or you plan on making one sheet per race/class combo*, don't make an elven linewalker sheet.

I have also printed a copy of the attributes chart, the H2H charts, the Robot/SN damage table, speed chart, and similar. I've considered putting them all one page and making a laminated reference sheet for the table. That's on my to-do list.

The longest part of chargen is definitely the choosing of OCC, selection of powers, spells, and psionics. Good prep work can speed up everything else, but players will still want to read all the options and worry over every choice. If you find an answer to that part, I'm listening.



° See the back pages of DB2: Phase World for some very basic official examples of this technique.
* Bad idea. Your time is precious.

[Bill]

When I demo the game, I usually offer a bunch of pregenerated characters to avoid this problem (they're available in the thread I've got linked in my signature if you want to borrow them). Trying to do a group character generation is a huge pain, but handouts like you want to use can make it easier. Though when I am helping a person build their own character the first time, I generally prefer to do that one on one.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Could just pre-gen everything but the attributes, of the classes you'd like in the game. That way they are just rolling 3d6's. Maybe let them pick out their own weapons.

[Warshield73]

Could just pre-gen everything but the attributes, of the classes you'd like in the game. That way they are just rolling 3d6's. Maybe let them pick out their own weapons.

I usually just leave a few things for a player to choose like a couple of skills or a selection of equipment or spells or something for them to personalize it without taking too much time.

[Glorath]

One of the things that will strengthen your understanding of the game like nothing else is preparing pregenerated characters. I keep a notebook of nothing but pregens that can be used to start a game session. I suggest starting with a bunch of Level 1 characters, and then start building them up by level, completing sheets for them so that you always have characters that can be used for the adventure that you are running. I have also discovered that this builds understanding of the various abilities that a particular OCC or RCC has access to, and also helps me to cut down on the amount of "munchkin" characters that some players are notorious for building. Lastly, nothing helps you to design challenging adventures better than a familiarity with the different characters that may be adventuring with you. I realize that some of these ideas are very basic, but thinking about them in this light helps keep me motivated to GM.

[Rishu903]

° See the back pages of DB2: Phase World for some very basic official examples of this technique.