How have I not posted here since October? I’ve been busy and am easily distracted and but part of the delay has been overthinking what it means to post a blog. I got some quality advice from the prolific Prismatic Wasteland to break out of the slump.
Ah yeah. This isn’t a published book or zine, this is just the first draft place for any neat idea I want to share with folks. The important thing is the practice of sharing, or writing something about what I care about or find neat in RPGs and life, not that every single thought needs to be well considered. I’m super guilty of waiting for some muse to come and only writing then. Sometimes you’re not inspired but turns out you get inspired more often by actually doing the thing. Routine and practice isn’t sexy or fun but it’s the way anything get done and bit by bit improves. Something mid is always better than a perfect nothing.
For this New Year I commit to giving you, reader, more middling quality and poorly edited blog posts. There will hopefully be some absolute bangers too. You should try the same!
Anyways, I just started an in-person Traveller RPG campaign with some friends and I’ve been really enjoying it. The lifepath collaborative character building mini-game where you spend a session making characters was concerning because I’ve spent years trying to make getting into my games quicker, more accessible, and less complex to not scare off new players. But it was great! We went around the table and had everyone design a homeworld that I added to my sector map which gave them instant buy in to the setting and reduced my workload.
Then we went through each 4 year term around the table to each player and found how life treated. There was tragic mishaps, ridiculous fame, fortune, and betrayals as they aged (The fact characters can die in character creation in the original rules is hilarious and sets a fun tone, though we were playing Mongoose 2e Traveller where they only suffer mishaps). We’ll be starting the game with characters in their 40’s that have lived an eventful life and have the skills and existing contacts to prove it and are working on paying off an 11 million credit mortgage as one celebrity artist noble seeks to save her doomed world and a former successful pirate, and an ex-marine mob enforcer too good with lasers are deadset on revenge against Wesley the Rat who sold them both out during both their criminal days. It’s the most fun I’ve had in character creation. People dug it and didn’t find it too long either!
I think there’s a place for long form character creation when the complexity is itself fun and helps for a connections in a big campaign sandbox. This post on Rise Up Comus had me thinking about offering different modes of character creation in the same game. Replacement characters I’ll probably just have players use a quick generator for unless they want to play the lifepath minigame on their own or we both have an hour free to hang.