In my current campaign my players may choose to either create new characters based on their real selves, in order for them to play as themselves, or to create brand new characters.

Playing as themselves should both give them some benefits and disadvantages. For one, they should have skills matching their real life skillset which puts them stay disadvantage compared to players who freely choose whatever skills they want. Furthermore I want the benefits to be noticeable in early game, but get more diluted as experience points accumulate.

I've thought about several options, such as giving them 4 extra career skills and reducing starting exp by 50 or so, however right now I am favouring the following;

Give those players 8 free skill points they may only place in skills they have in real life (limit 1 rank), to compensate for this they only choose 6 career skills on character creation. This way it is a great benefit in early game and less beneficial as time goes by, and it mirrors the fact that they have baggage (they have skills already developed, but learning new skillsets is more difficult).

Anyone got any thoughts on this or ideas for other ways to do this? I want both options (create yourself or create new character) to be attractive, neither should be the optimal choice for character creation.

EDIT: Due to some confusion I'll clarify a few points:

I am not asking if this is a good idea or not, for a lot of groups letting people play as themselves is a very dangerous pitfall for hurt feelings and disagreements and is absolutely not for everyone. This is however not a problem for my group, who consist of real life friends who hang out besides playing roleplaying games and who have played together for 4+ years and who have already tried this before with no hurt feelings.

From a story perspective the players will be sent on an intensive training period (imagine a special ops bootcamp) prior to the game start. So character creation thus represent them as themselves + 6 months of new training on top, which is why the character they end up with will be their base skills + a bit extra.

Confused as to why you believe "creating yourself" needs to have different rules than "normal" character creation when the things you're proposing still ares no more likely to yield a "real person" than the vanilla character creation.

Youre still placing arbitrary restraints on the abstracting of real life concepts and abilities.

If I told my professor friend that he can "create himself" but can only put 1 rank in Knowledge, he'd laugh in my face and say "well that's not me". Same with the former infantry sniper that sits at my table every week. "I know you have like 20-whatever confirmed kills, but you only get 1 rank in Ranged heavy to 'create yourself'." What? Or my table mate that's a project manager at a Tech company. "Yea, you're creation of apps for the NBA is only worth 1 rank in Computers. But it's still totally you!"

Just use vanilla character creation, and tell them they can make appriximations of themselves. Don't over complicate this. It's not worth it.

The danger of players creating themselves, or chatacters based in other players has lent to hurt feelings and people feeling left out. Using standard character creation and calling them an alternate reality version of themselves has been used at my table to good effect. If you want their real world experience to help early on give boost dies for explai ing why their idea works.

2 hours ago, emsquared said:

Confused as to why you believe "creating yourself" needs to have different rules than "normal" character creation when the things you're proposing still ares no more likely to yield a "real person" than the vanilla character creation.

Youre still placing arbitrary restraints on the abstracting of real life concepts and abilities.

If I told my professor friend that he can "create himself" but can only put 1 rank in Knowledge, he'd laugh in my face and say "well that's not me". Same with the former infantry sniper that sits at my table every week. "I know you have like 20-whatever confirmed kills, but you only get 1 rank in Ranged heavy to 'create yourself'." What? Or my table mate that's a project manager at a Tech company. "Yea, you're creation of apps for the NBA is only worth 1 rank in Computers. But it's still totally you!"

Just use vanilla character creation, and tell them they can make appriximations of themselves. Don't over complicate this. It's not worth it.

The max 1 tank was for balancing purposes, but maybe that could be removed. As for "over complicating" this, I need to do something, otherwise using the standard character creation will only punish the people who choose to play themselves, which is no fun.

EDIT: I wrote the above during my commute, just thought I'd clarify a bit.

You say you're confused for why I would need a separate rules for creating yourself vs a normal character. In the current setting there are compelling reasons for why you would choose to play as yourself, from a narrative point of view, but also possible to not do so. If people were to choose to play as themselves because it's the fun/interesting thing to do, then they are severely punished if using normal character creation, since you are forced to use your starting exp on less worthwhile skills since that is what you have in real life.

Note, from a story perspective the players will be sent on an intensive training period (imagine a special ops bootcamp) prior to the game start. So character creation thus represent them as themselves + 6 months of new training on top, which is why the character they end up with will be their base + a bit extra.

1 hour ago, Molinext said:

The danger of players creating themselves, or chatacters based in other players has lent to hurt feelings and people feeling left out. Using standard character creation and calling them an alternate reality version of themselves has been used at my table to good effect. If you want their real world experience to help early on give boost dies for explai ing why their idea works.

This isn't a concern for my group.

EDIT: I wrote the above during my commute, just thought I'd clarify a bit.

I am not asking if this is a good idea or not, for a lot of groups letting people play as themselves is a very dangerous pitfall for hurt feelings and disagreements and is absolutely not for everyone. This is however not a problem for my group, who consist of real life friends who hang out besides playing roleplaying games and who have played together for 4+ years and who have already tried this before with no hurt feelings.

Though it was in AD&d 2, my first proper RPG experience was this. It worked really well and gave me a helpful introduction so I have no issue with the concept that the op is talking about. Now I do not know your players, they could well be Military veterans or scientists for all I know. If none of your players are top 5 marksmen or Nobel laureates then your current plan should be OK, I would possibly increase starting xp and/or max ranks if you have players who are supremely skilled in something.

Also, though I realise as per your above post that you are not asking if it is a good idea or not, my thought is that I don't see any reason you should be specifically disadvantaged playing yourself. Dependent on the setting being used just playing myself might be a disadvantage: computer skills would be at least rank 2 but would be pointless in a fantasy or Steam Punk game, my knowledge in Intellectual Property law could again be rank 2 or 3 but would be all but useless unless we were playing in a modern day game where filing the National Validation of a European Patent in Greece or Great Britain was needed, It would be the additional skills I could add from the specops bootcamp would be what was useful in game play. The advantage of playing yourself is mainly for me the role playing aspect. Now, if your players are all military or law enforcement, or are gun enthusiasts (if you're in America) and therefore have good gun skills I could see how that might be of help.

Suggestions;

a) If their skills should be above rank 2 let them purchase one or two skills to rank 3

b) If their skills are not above rank 2 then giving them free ranks or extra exp would work

c) Allow them to choose a number of skills as known skills, treating them during character generation as career skills

You could do one, two or all three of the above suggestions but I wouldn't make vanilla characters any worse over the shortrun or better over the long run, let the player choose what he wants. Whatever you choose to do, I hope you guys have fun.

E

You should check out the End of the World series of adventures from FFG where you play yourself in an end of the world scenario. It's a completely different system, but the character creation process is pretty cool. I ran a rise of the machines scenario and we quickly realized it was getting a little too real given one guy had just adopted a couple of girls and another had a bunch of pets. Choices needed to be made and it got real, real quick. It was still a game, I didn't really get plastered on the wall by a chunk of a satellite, they weren't in a canoe paddling up a waterway in Florida, etc. =)

If I would run one of those scenarios again, I would either pick up a People magazine and lay it in front of my group telling them to pick anyone from it (Azzmodeus gave me this idea) or just have them pick a celebrity to create for the apocalypse.

Good luck!

Z

8 hours ago, Morridini said:

balancing purposes

Yeah the book already does this. You can't exceed 2 in skills at character creation.

I think you've got a case of overthinking this, no offense. The system takes a cinematic stance on reality anyway, so you fudge realism a bit.

What I would do is this: determine what skills are appropriate for the setting, let each player select their eight career skills they think is appropriate for their "real selves" or a close approximation, and proceed through character creation as normal.

A general comment about my players and the setting: We all have very similar background 3 have PhDs in Physics and 3 have masters in physics, which give us a set of skills not immediately useful beyond modern day settings. Our setting however are all settings, it is a universe jumping campaign, the last 3 weeks (the campaign stars before character creation, during these 3 sessions they have played characters I designed for them) we have been in Skyrim, next up might be The Matrix, Dresden Files or whatever. We've named this setting the OmniVerse and have a thread about it on this forum somewhere.

3 hours ago, eldath said:

Suggestions;

a) If their skills should be above rank 2 let them purchase one or two skills to rank 3

b) If their skills are not above rank 2 then giving them free ranks or extra exp would work

c) Allow them to choose a number of skills as known skills, treating them during character generation as career skills

You could do one, two or all three of the above suggestions but I wouldn't make vanilla characters any worse over the shortrun or better over the long run, let the player choose what he wants. Whatever you choose to do, I hope you guys have fun.

E

Thanks for your suggestions, having fun is the very reason I'm trying to figure this out, and I'm sure we'll find something we agree on, option 2 and 3 are some I might consider.

2 hours ago, Zszree said:

You should check out the End of the World series of adventures from FFG where you play yourself in an end of the world scenario. It's a completely different system, but the character creation process is pretty cool. I ran a rise of the machines scenario and we quickly realized it was getting a little too real given one guy had just adopted a couple of girls and another had a bunch of pets. Choices needed to be made and it got real, real quick. It was still a game, I didn't really get plastered on the wall by a chunk of a satellite, they weren't in a canoe paddling up a waterway in Florida, etc. =)

If I would run one of those scenarios again, I would either pick up a People magazine and lay it in front of my group telling them to pick anyone from it (Azzmodeus gave me this idea) or just have them pick a celebrity to create for the apocalypse.

Good luck!

Z

I'll take a look, thanks.

1 hour ago, Swordbreaker said:

Yeah the book already does this. You can't exceed 2 in skills at character creation.

I think you've got a case of overthinking this, no offense. The system takes a cinematic stance on reality anyway, so you fudge realism a bit.

What I would do is this: determine what skills are appropriate for the setting, let each player select their eight career skills they think is appropriate for their "real selves" or a close approximation, and proceed through character creation as normal.

I'm sorry but I think you missed one point; not all my players are inclined to choose making themselves. The people who end up wanting to play as themselves, do it because it is the fun option, however using character creation as written for all players will mean that these players will have far inferior characters than the players who opt to create custom characters., which is anti-fun. The focus for us when playing Genesys is the narrative and fun aspect, and when game mechanics collide with the entertainment value we often house-rule things to make things more fun, and is in essence what Genesys is about. So what I am trying to do is find some boons to give the players who want to play as themselves, to counteract the fact that they are forced to put skill points into sub-optimal skills, without the boons being so good that this choice is inherently better than custom characters. I hope it's clearer now.

2 hours ago, Morridini said:

Our setting however are all settings, it is a universe jumping campaign, the last 3 weeks (the campaign stars before character creation, during these 3 sessions they have played characters I designed for them) we have been in Skyrim, next up might be The Matrix, Dresden Files or whatever. We've named this setting the OmniVerse and have a thread about it on this forum somewhere.

Cool, some friends and I ran a game we called 'just five minutes' which was kind of a cross between Quantum Leap and Sliders (two TV shows if you don't know them). We each took turns to ref and had one or two settings each, it was tremendous fun. We didn't play ourselves in our one but that might have worked as well.

Morridini,

Is building from the average human template in the book not what you are doing? Assuming they are all human. =) I believe there is the 1 rank in 2 non-career skills you get at character creation. Those could be used for combat skills, however you mentioned a "boot camp" or intense training they will go through at the start. Is that where they will be selecting their "career"? I know you all are physicists, so maybe you select the Intellectual Human template and take the free rank in Knowledge. When you go to these different "worlds" and if you breakdown the Knowledge skill into others just transfer that rank (or ranks) into a Knowledge skill that makes sense. Like a fantasy setting might have Education, a modern setting might have Science or Engineering.

Actually, I would just have that "boot camp" be a place where they just select any 8 skills to put 4 ranks into and go with a career-less system. Those 8 skills they choose count as career skills for then on out. If anything, they will be better off than other characters in other settings. I would still go with the Intellectual Human to give them the Knowledge rank.

Just a thought.

Z

Yeah that's basically how we've set it up. For those who will be playing as themselves they start out with the basic human or human intellect archetypes, and skills matching their real life characters (the "boon" as I've called it previously. Then the "boot camp" happens which is essentially the rest of character creation, where they choose a career (8 career skills, 4 of which you gain skill points in) and spend starting xp. The players who do not wish to play as themselves are free to choose any species from all fictional universes we can think of, with the only restriction is no God-level beings (like, no Kryptonians unless we can somehow explain why they would be nerfed to be less than Superman).