Talk:Sphere RPG Character Creation

Rim

The following includes a prototype system to determine how transgenic a character is and consequently what templates they likely have access to. Of course players are free to select whatever template they want.

Youth

Planet of Birth
One's planet of birth has a substantial effect on one's future. Cultural, educational, economic and transgenic differences can all have a lasting effect on an individual.

Backwater World: There are many backwater worlds in known space, often on worlds of limited economic value and borderline habitability. +2 Physique, +1 Endurance

Space Colony: While planets are preferred for obvious reasons, there are many small orbital stations or nomadic family-ships spread thinly across known space. 50% chance of being Floater genotype. +1 Intellect, +1 Perception, +1 Zero-G

Central World: A few of these major worlds are scattered across the Rim, centers of industry and commerce.

Someone else can maybe try to put this together. --Shrike 14:07, 23 January 2012 (PST)

Adulthood

For character generation purposes, a character's pre-adventuring adulthood is divided up into a number of 'periods'. These are essentially blocks of life during which the character gained meaningful skills and experiences. While the duration of a given period is flexible - typically 1-3 years, as a general rule characters generated with more periods are older and more experienced, though exceptions can happen!
Adulthood Periods can be spent in several ways.

Careers are substantial investments in time and learning and by default require three Periods of time - this means that most starting characters will only have one Career under their belt. Careers are generally assumed to include a substantial amount of book learning (or in case of some, nothing but) and consequently provide a broad spectrum of skills.

Vocations are shorter-term jobs, career extensions or side projects and as such take a single Period each. They may provide an unusual skillset or a combination of monetary rewards and useful experience. Three Vocations broadly equate to a single Career choice, though someone who has many Vocations has presumably jumped between many different short-term positions and consequently may be more 'street smart' than classically educated.

Promotions represent a character spending extended time in a given position or career track and thus recieving increased rank (be it military or otherwise), more substantial starting resources or some combination. Like Vocations, Promotions require one Period each. However, Promotions need to be directly linked to a Career.

Intensive Training is generally only available for very specific, often military or paramilitary skillset and requires two Periods. It provides comprehensive but narrow instruction and is a best fit for characters who are 'fresh from the academy' or the equivalent, though it could also apply to more unusual situations such as a doctor that cross-trained to also be a pilot.

It is suggested that starting characters recieve 3 Periods, ie, sufficient to allow them to buy a starting career, with more Periods being added for more experienced starting characters. Additionally to provide a measure of balance, it is recommended that in mixed PC groups baseline/classic humans recieve 1-2 extra periods, trading out ability for skill.
As a roleplaying suggestion, older characters should have a greater proportion of Promotions - few individuals spend their entire lives learning.

Character Generation

Step 1) Character Concept

The character concept is the most important thing to have to start a character. Are they a rugged freedom fighter? A cultured oligarch? An untested rookie? A free trader on his third career? Where do they come from? All these things are fundamental to making a character.

Step 2) Determine Genetic Background

Now that you have a character concept, the next step is to determine the character's genetic background. It may form a fundamental part of a character's identity, conversely, the specific choice made may be broadly irrelevant to the character concept. Either way, a character's genetic background will have substantial effects both on character generation, attributes and how they interact with people and institutions.

Sphere has several ways to determine a character's genetic background and consequently the GM should apply this equally. Find out what method your campaign is using first - it may allow for unlimited choice, or may result in some hard limits.

Step 3) Assign Attributes

Attributes are a core element of your character, determining what you are naturally good and bad at. Mechanically speaking, they are your dice pool for performing skill tests.

A character must assign one attribute as a Strength (3) and another as a Weakness (1), while all others are rated at 2. These will have substantial long-term effects on a character's growth and development; barring cyberware or extensive biological reworking, their Strength will always be a strong point and their Weakness a weak point.

Finally, many genetic backgrounds have specific attribute allowances or limits; for example designed-for-socialization Ishtars do not allow Charisma as a Weakness.

Step 4) Lifepath

Once a character's starting attributes are assigned, he or she is essentially 'born'. They will now enter the lifepath, which is a series of choices that determines a character's skills, merits and other elements. This gives a character a basic skeleton for their personal history to date - what sort of school they went to, what previous careers they engaged in, so forth. Conversely, it provides hard statistics for characters following

Genetic Templates

Sidebar: Yes, they really are superior

"Why are transgenic templates free? That's not very fair."

Emergent Properties is an unabashedly transhumanist setting. A fundamental element of the setting is that the human body and mind can and will be improved through the application of technology. Moreover, and more importantly, Emergent Properties does not take a position on the morality of human enhancement. Like any other technology human enhancement can be used to improve the lot of those affected, or be used to conduct repression on a grand scale.

What Emergent Properties does not make any apologies for is the simple position that transhumans are superior. That is, after all, the entire point of the multigenerational exercise that a substantial segment of the human population has been engaged in. Transhumans in all their myriad forms are improvements upon the 'normal' humans that we, the players and GMs, are familiar with. In Emergent Properties being a transhuman is not just an informed attribute; it is a very real thing .

Life Events

Any excess CP for a skill that would be insuficient to reach the next rank (eg, having 6 CP in a skill - enough to get rank 3 but 2 CP short of rank 4) can either refund the excess into a character's general CP pool or spend CP to make up the shortage.

Rank 3 skills (4 CP each)

Rank 2 skills (2 CP each)

Rank 1 skills (1 CP each)

All characters must take one Educational Background to determine their initial skill spread. These fill a character's early life up to the point at which they stopped focussing on education

Childhood/family situation? Have to determine what it affects.