[Okkupasjon!] Character design concept

[matthijs]

A few others and I are just starting to throw around ideas for a Norwegian role-playing game called "Okkupasjon!". The game is set in Norway 1940, while the country was taken over by the Nazis. However, there's all sorts of folklore mixed in; the Nazi torturists hire trolls, the huldrer (little people) are persecuted and put into camps (they're sub-humans), etc.

The game is - believe it or not - meant to be fairly light-hearted and action oriented; think "The Price of Freedom" rather than White Wolf's current WWI stuff.

We're still very much at the brainstorming stage, but I'm thinking of having characters defined by abilities that 1) don't have a level/rating, and 2) must be unique within the party. Each player chooses a number of cards from a deck, so that each card can only belong to one character. Cards can be stuff like "Troll - big and strong, can knock out one opponent automatically each scenario, no matter what the circumstances", or "Owns illegal radio - can get information from London", or "Rifleman - gets +3 when firing a ranged weapon".

What would be the advantages/disadvantages of having this as a basis for character generation?

[Jeph]

So, in effect, you'd get a random character? That could be cool. Especially if the first stage of chargen is for the group to come up with 54 Traits that they'd like to appear together (or 52, or however many there are cards in your deck), and then use the randomizing method to determine who gets which. Heck, that could even extend to inmportant NPCs.

However, I forsee problems in which players draw "Troll" for their first card and "Hulder" for their second... Some mutual exclusivity rule might be in order.

Keep us posted. :^)
--Jeff

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I think it's a wonderful basis for character generation and suggest that you become very familiar with the humorous card game Munchkin. Its system offers many important insights about how characters and their various abilities interact.

I also encourage you to consider hands of similar cards for play itself. Munchkin is also extremely well-designed in these terms (although bear in mind role-playing is not its aim). Also, are you familiar with the game Once Upon a Time?

Best,
Ron

[matthijs]

Well, what I had in mind was letting players pick the cards they liked; so they could still custom-build their characters.

However, I've also thought about this in combination with scenario design. If you're designing a sabotage scenario, you might want to specify a set of cards that players should have access to (such as "Sneaky" or "Owns a truckload of tools").

Then, you could really speed up things by using random draw: Pick up a scenario, let the players draw random cards from those on the scenario's list, give each character a name, and go.

Mutual exclusivity could be an issue both in random and non-random chargen. The easiest thing would be to print stuff on the cards ("Not compatible with XX").

Using the hands of cards for play itself sounds interesting, too. I've played Munchkin, but only once, a while ago; I'll look into it again. (Once Upon a Time is an old favourite - for concept more than game-play, though).

[matthijs]

So we've thrown some ideas around, and this is where we're at right now:

- Two decks of cards, one for the GM, one for the players.
- Player cards are divided into Classes and Traits. A Class gives the basic stats of a character; Traits modify these, add skills, equipment, background, dramatic crunchy bits etc.
- Players can choose cards or draw randomly, depending on what kind of scenario it is. Quick one-offs: random. Specific scenarios, long-term campaigns: Choose.
- GM cards all have several fields. If you want a random NPC, you draw a card and look at the NPC field. If you want a random location, look at the Location field etc.
- Fields are: NPC (perhaps divided into enemy and friend), location, event, equipment etc.
- Dice are used in play, not in chargen. No character sheets are used, only the cards.

Is this interesting/on topic for The Forge? Or am I just designing in public for no real reason? If people find this inspiring, I'll continue to post updates (and hope for comments).

[Ben O'Neal]

Player cards are divided into Classes and Traits. A Class gives the basic stats of a character; Traits modify these, add skills, equipment, background, dramatic crunchy bits etc.

Dice are used in play, not in chargen. No character sheets are used, only the cards.

correct me if i'm wrong, but it sounds to me like your players DO have character sheets, in the forms of the cards they draw.

actually, it sounds like pretty standard fair except for chargen. now the crunchy mechanics of your system may be totally out there, but it seems like all you've done so far is make chargen random and pre-defined. what's the difference between drawing a card that says my character has a strength of 24, or rolling a strength of 24?

but i don't claim to know everything you have in your mind, i can only comment on what i have interpeted of what has been presented thus far.

[matthijs]

correct me if i'm wrong, but it sounds to me like your players DO have character sheets, in the forms of the cards they draw.

Well, one of my intentions is that they don't have to write stuff down. So yes, they have "character sheets", in the sense that they have information about their characters in front of them; but that information is mostly static, and won't be written down or erased.

An added advantage of the cards is that the cards have all necessary system info written on them, so there's no need for players to look up spells, skill descriptions etc during play (nor to write down tons of info).

actually, it sounds like pretty standard fair except for chargen. now the crunchy mechanics of your system may be totally out there, but it seems like all you've done so far is make chargen random and pre-defined. what's the difference between drawing a card that says my character has a strength of 24, or rolling a strength of 24?

Well, I'm not claiming that it's "out there" in any way. But I haven't seen cards used in this way before, and I believe chargen will be hugely speeded up by this approach. And bear in mind that cards don't just carry numbers; they carry descriptions of traits. So the whole "rolling-dice-looking-up-tables"-process can be eliminated.

[Ben O'Neal]

sure, streamlining chargen can't really be a bad thing.

but when i read your first post i interpreted the system as being really free-form, where things where driven by narration, which was driven by the cards. i imagined something where i might play my "knock out any character once per session" card, and it might have say a value of 5, and then if the GM wanted to keep that character conscious, they would have to play a card with a defense of at least 5. or if you had that "rifleman: +3 to all ranged attacks" card, then you'd keep that in your hand, and any ranged attack card with a value of say, 2, would then have a value of 5, making all your ranged attacks much harder to defend against.

i dunno, that's just the impression that i got, and i thought that sounded really cool. i WAS going to suggest some system by which the winners of a battle got to keep the cards of the losers, thus gaining all sorts of defense and new attacks, to make them even harder to kill from then on.

so i guess i was just a little dissapointed when i saw that you were going more for the stats and rolls kinda thing, not because i have anything against a stats and rolls kinda thing (hell, thats what i'm making myself), but more because i had hopes for something really cool and fun, but it was just my poor interpretation. my bad.