Not only was this the first time we, as a group, had met in three weeks, but this was also the first time that we took our homebrew rules out for a spin. And let me tell you, what a spin it was.
I was personally thrown for a loop right from the word go. We all met at Mayhem on the west side (our usual gaming haunt, which on Tuesday nights just happens to be populated mostly by Pokemon playing twelve year olds) and I set about rolling up the first of four characters, like we had discussed the last time we met. Except Marty said, What are you doing? You're running the adventure.
I didn't know how to take that, and figured he was pulling my leg, so I continued rolling up my chars. And Marty continued, No seriously. I'm rolling up characters. You're running the game.
I am?
Yep. You said that last time we met, that you'd take care of it.
Jonny chimed in, I don't remember this, but then again, we were pretty drunk.
Which is true. We were. I remember it fondly. But it left me in something of a predicament, because I didn't remember doing that at all. And it was obvious that Marty hadn't come prepared with an adventure, and so after some bitching and moaning I took a piece of paper and a pen and a drink and went outside to smoke and think about coming up with a quick adventure, using never-before-tested rules, while Jonny and Marty rolled up their four characters each.
And I did. By God, I did. And it included quite a bit, actually: some minor investigative/social interactions, a big fight, and a tension-building twist right at the end. Oh man, good stuff. And it took all of four lines on my piece of paper.
So the idea is, in our system, that the players do not play characters, per se. That is to say, they do play the characters, but they aren't actually the characters. You see what I'm getting at? They are, rather, the faceless corporation, the slave-drivers, the decision-makers. They each have a stable of characters, which they can pick and choose from for any particular mission. And so they rolled up their starting stable of characters, using our proprietary twelve-stat system, and rolled a background (which was, admittedly, taken from another game. We'll use it until we come up with our own background chart) I'm seriously liking this random background thing. It provides depth to a character right from the beginning. It's a springboard for character development, without being too constricting.
I was surprised at how long it took them to roll up four characters each, actually. I think it turned out to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 30 minutes (I wasn't really paying attention. I just remember being surprised when I came back in after thinking about the scenario and they weren't finished). But then again, thinking about it, a great deal of that time was probably spent on remembering what the attributes were and writing them down on sheets by hand (I, being unprepared, hadn't come up with character sheets yet). So it'll probably get faster once everybody knows what they're doing.
Redshirt is a primarily d6 system. d6 are used in the actual gaming, while d10s are used in random table lookups, because d100 charts are by far the best. There are no other dice. So characters could probably get away with only bringing d6s, so long as the GM had some d10s for those occasions when they're needed, which aren't many.
There are 6 Primary Attributes, so far: Strength, Agility, Intuition, Reason, Guile, and Charisma. The player rolls 3d6 and compares the result to a standard Gygaxian attribute table: 3=-3, 4-5=-2, 6-8=-1, 9-12=0,13-15=1, 16-17=2, 18=3. The result is their score. So the character doesn't have a Strength of 7. He has a Strength of -1. 0 can be considered the human average.
There are additionally 6 Secondary Attributes: Health, Reaction, Morale, Willpower, Cool, and Presence. These are determined by simply adding 10 to their corresponding Primary Attribute. So a character with a -1 Strength would have a 9 Health. &c.
Then the characters roll on a background chart (d100 this time). Jonny got an Elven Sage, a Halfling Vagrant, a Dwarven Herder, and a Dwarven Blacksmith. Now, like I said before, we were using a table from a different game, and this raised some issues, because there are no demi-humans in the City. They're all just human. We took the results to mean that he had 3 height-challenged fellows (midgets) and a tall gangly skinny awkward guy. Sort of giantish, even. A natural basketball player. Which meant that his stable somewhat resembled a carnival. But whatever, that's cool.
Marty rolled a Beggar, a Blacksmith, a Woodcutter, and a Noble. Interesting. The beggar, as it turns out, was about the only person to have halfway-decent attributes, and that in his Guile and Charisma. Everybody else was pretty much average (0s in their scores). Note also that each character came with starting equipment as well, which was determined by their backgrounds. So the Herder had a Staff and a Sow. The Noble had a Longsword and a valuable Ring. &c.
And game on, baby.
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