One of the things for Hammercalled (the setting as well as the game for once) is that I really want to have strong ways to tie the players into the world and into their characters.

In the core setting the Hammercalled are an auxiliary force to interplanetary peacekeepers (for lack of a better term) who seek to prevent an apocalyptic entity from destroying all intelligent life in the universe.

This means that the player characters are part of a large organization, but are still far enough from the limelight to control their own destinies.

It also means that we can play with some setups to get things working to allow players to go through a process. Ultimately I'm not sure how large this will have to be, and I'd like some feedback from people. I'm thinking of offering sort of a branching tree system that allows players to also join a faction out of character creation; players record, for instance, "Peaceful" options or "Violent" options, and "Legalistic" or "Improvising" options as they go through, which ends up affiliating them with one of the six factions within the Hammer of Lethe.

How-To

This narrative section allows you to work on creating your character based on the rules of character creation in Hammercalled. You may choose Attributes, create Specializations, and even get suggested Talents and Gear during this process.

The system I'm going for is going to be a full-fledged choice for Attributes (either roll or use the array, and then distribute via preference or template). Specializations will be made interactively, and then given +15 or +5 ratings.

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Now you will select your Specializations while going through an interactive fiction segment. You will be given choices at various steps.

At each step, you will be asked to choose either something that your character is already good at (this will happen six times) or something your character is just starting to learn (this will happen twice). Write these in the form of statements beginning with "I am able to..." (we call these IAATs), for instance: "I am able to use magic to teleport myself," "I am able to judge whether someone is trustworthy or not," or "I am able to find hiding places." If using the Hammercalled Character Sheet, put the IAATs for your existing strengths in the blanks under one Specialization, and the IAATs for developing ones under a second Specialization. Otherwise, record the two groups of IAATs separately for later reference.

You will also be asked to choose whether your responses are Peaceful or Violent, Subtle or Brash, and Self-Promoting or Altruistic at different points during this process. These choices will help determine which faction within the Hammer you are most likely to affiliate with. Record these somewhere; you do not need them on the character sheet itself, though you can put them in the Notes section if you desire.

So the big thing that I want to do here is to have every character feel living from the start, but also set up a system for character creation where the player needs absolutely no skill when starting to play the game.

The Specialization section, which we're looking at now, is going to be the first and foremost element of the in-play character creation system, and it's going to be the hardest part, but in addition to Attributes (which are fairly mathematical and distributed in a less crunchy manner), the alignment axes channel the players toward one of the six factions.

By the time the character completes the process, they should have five decisions on each axis (e.g. Peaceful x4, Violent x1) or

The reason for this is simple: characters get a free Talent from their faction. They are also able to choose from pre-made Gear from any faction, but they're sort of assumed to prefer their own.

Introduction

The technician smiles at you out of both his mouths as he hooks you into the simulator, his toothy grin failing to reassure you as you begin to fall into virtual reality.

"You'll have a moment of disorientation, then everything will begin to make sense again. Be careful; you can't die, but if you fail too badly you'll be on cleanup duty for months."

"Oh, and because this is a simulation, try to show off all your strengths. The Hammer is watching, and they want versatile agents."

The setup for this is supposed to be simple enough to understand and serve as a primer to the setting. Not a whole lot of details yet, but this is just a short snippet of what would probably be five or six paragraphs.

By this point we've gone mostly into fiction, so we're not doing rules explanations any more, other than to simply explain to players what they should do.

Sample Event

Despite your best effort, your enemies manage to set off the bomb before you can reach it. You find yourself beneath the gala, ears ringing and eyes blurred with smoke.

You'll need to give it your all to get out of the basement and back to an unrestricted area without facing scrutiny. To make matters worse, the local security forces have deployed robotic drones to sweep for intruders, and now they're right on top of you.

Craft an IAAT that your character is already good at that helps them get out of this situation, and record whether their action is Peaceful or Violent and Subtle or Brash.

This system is designed to basically do three things:

• Make sure player characters are directed toward the tasks that Hammercalled expects them to do.
• Give novice players some prompts that give them ideas and help them fill out the character.
• Provide an experience that is more engaging than just building a character on a sheet.

Wrapping Up

This system is very early on in its construction, and I want to hear some honest feedback. Does this system look good? Would you rather just mechanically handle character creation (even though the two systems are compatible, unlike in some other systems)? Is it an alternative you might see one or two people in a group using?

Let us know in the comments below.