Character Generation part I

I stumbled over a few comments about character generation at a few blogs, that currently slip my mind, that got me thinking about character generation.

I've probably rolled up more characters for games never played than characters for actual games.  There is something about the creation process I love.  It must be my inner accountant.

The Traveller chargen is probably the easiest for straight randomness, with Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay and Mechwarrior close on its heels.  There may be other systems similiar to Traveller, but I've not yet encounter such.  I know that with Traveller chargen there is usually a good chance of death and with Mechwarrior some short of uncool injury or addiction was 90% going to rear its ugly head.

Why is this all important?  Because I think this is a fundemental way to approach the game - play the role of the character that you are given/rolled, don't try to create your alter ego, ala The Matrix.

My introduction to D&D was at the Hilsmere public library.  I was visiting my grandfather and  wandered into the library and found a group playing.  They offered to let me play handing me one of the henchmen and the rest is history.  This is why I prefer to play anything and really don't care too much about party balance and other esoteric gaming concepts; I want to see if what happens when you play your character to type.

Two days home, sick, not much accomplished.

I came home early on Wednesday ill.  I pretty much had my assistant make corrections on her data entry and cut accounts payable checks and then went home.  Pretty miserable.  Didn't make it to work on Thursday (not like I had to commute far, just downstairs to my home office/man cave).  Made it into the office today despite not being 100% and I realize with all that free time I didn't get much done.

Outside of setting up the new pool (a cheapie from Toys r Us) I've got the weekend free.  Maybe I'll get around to working more on the Fantasy Grounds II software.

Unbreaking the Interwebs and beyond

It took me a few days and another call to Verizon FIOS tech support* and I got my router reset and then was able to fiddle for a few more days and got my port forwarding correct to handle Fantasy Grounds II.

Now I just need to figure out how to populate a character sheet!  I'm sure I'll figure it out, it is just a pain to figure out so much crap.  Just like when I used to know the DOS commands and knew how to manually use Lotus123, todays' users understand all of the hotkeys.  I'll have to print out a few cheat sheets and post them around my desk for help.

I'm trying to join a Sunday evening game and I've posted for interest about a Wednesday night game on both the FGII forums and over at Pen and Paper Games.

Plus I found a very nice retro-clone game for free call Dark Dungeons.  I'll post more later, as I'm still on the clock.  :)


* Verizon FIOS tech support is generally good and my biggest gripe is the automated system at the beginning of the call; I have no complaints about the techs themselves.  (Note Verizon - If you like that friendly plug, how about a little donation my way?  :) )