12 February 2011

RQII Young Kingdoms Character Creation – Some Thoughts

I’ve posted the player characters for the Young Kingdoms campaign that started up last week. The characters are: Edvund Yrvim (my PC), Bōdric Yrvim (Marcus’s PC), and Adralat Na-Keth (Peeter’s PC). Obviously, the PCs’ skills, hero points, and perhaps even ability scores will change (hopefully for the better!) as the campaign progresses. (I may edit their pages occasionally to reflect these changes.)

I doubt that the details of these characters will be of much interest to others, although looking them over might convey something about the RuneQuest II system and its Elric of Melniboné setting book.

Two especially nice features of the character creation system, in my opinion, include:

a. The ‘Passion’ system from the Elric of Melniboné book. This system enables the character’s intense love of, hatred of, hope for, fear of, fascination with, (etc.), x (where x can = a person, group, nation, culture, artifact, force [e.g., ‘Chaos’], or whatever) to interact mechanically with his abilities under certain circumstances. A character’s ‘passion’ score can rise or fall as the campaign progresses, depending on what happens that character. (And new passions can be acquired.)

b. The Background elements, which provide information on the character’s family (its reputation, which family members are still alive, etc.), relations (including the existence of allies, enemies, rivals, contacts, and so forth), and past history (unusual events in the character’s past). This aspect of the RuneQuest II system can give rise to all kinds of cool adventure possibilities.

I hope to post additional impressions of the RQII system as the campaign progresses.

3 comments:

  1. So how does the passion mechanic work?

    ReplyDelete
  2. It works in a variety of ways.

    1. To supplement any skill where a passion might legitimately aid you.
    2. To decrease any skill where a passion might be a drawback.
    3. To lend insight to a particular relationship
    4. To measure how two characters with similar passions are committed to the same cause.
    5. As a skill in its own right to resolve a particular game situation.

    This makes passions very flexible and multi-faceted. It can be a simply bonus to another skill (say +10% of the passion's value), or a roll-under the passion's value to determine an outcome.

    Like any other skill, Passions develop through players willingly increasing them - although the GM can also increase the passion depending on circumstances.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi

    Jim here.
    In an ELric campaign I run one of the PC's was sent on a mission to bring justice (kill) to a traitor to the Deathbringer Cult. I had my player roll against his passion Love (Family) he failed, she died.

    ReplyDelete

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I'm a Canadian political philosopher who lives primarily in Toronto but teaches in Milwaukee (sometimes in person, sometimes online).