So I’ve talked a little bit about some of the aspects on Saivryth. And I do intend to do future posts about more aspects, but I decided to go over some of the character generation dynamics for Saivryth this time.
As I have stated before, Saivryth was originally created as an RPG World, loosely based on the 3.5 Dungeons and Dragons system created by Wizards of the Coast. When I say loosely based, I mean that I used the 3.5 D&D system to generate character classes and basic world building. But everything else from the Gods to the Kingdoms and some of the Races are pretty much original in concept. Even the classic D&D Races that are on Saivryth have their own original twists to them to make them unique to Saivryth itself. My version of the Drow race comes to mind for this, as they are not an underground race or a matriarchal society. That is only one example of the differences between the 3.5 rules and the homebrew rules as gamers like to distinguish between them.
I have other differences too that I’ve created for Character Generation itself. Your standard D&D Character Sheet has six basic statistics that create a character, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. I added in two new statistics, or rather, one old statistic and one new one to balance things out. I never liked the idea of Charisma being the be all and end all of how a person looks or acts statistic wise. I much rather preferred the first edition rule of Comeliness for what a character looks like and leaving Charisma for their actions. So I included Comeliness as one of the basic statistics for character generation.
Over the years as a Game Master/Dungeon Master running a table top RPG game, I’ve learned that while players do pick up on the hints and plot lines you generate for them, sometimes a player or players don’t always follow those hints or plot lines. So I was faced with three options. The first option was to abandon all the work on a specific plot line. This can be very stressful for either the player or the GM. The second option was to force the player or players in the direction I, as the GM, wanted them to go in. This tended to make cranky unhappy players. The last option was to punt, and see if I could steer the game play back to the original plot line. After many frustrating games where things just did not get done, I eventually came up with another option that made things a bit more balanced for game play. I created an eighth statistic called Curiosity. This way when players were presented with something that I as the GM wanted them to act on I would ask for a Curiosity check and let them decide what to do after they either pass or fail the check. It has worked very well over the years.
So now we have our basic character generation statistics, Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Comeliness and Curiosity. The numbers that are generated to represent these particular statistics are created in the standard D&D format. A person rolls the standard 6 sided dice 4 times and takes the highest 3 numbers out of the 4 rolls to create their scores. I usually give the player the option to re roll 1’s and 2’s to make the numbers a bit more reasonable for a character.
After that it’s just deciding what the player wants to make their character be class and race wise. And of course what skills or feats the character has to flesh out their abilities and potential background. And that’s it, all that is needed to create a basic Saivryth Character. There are plenty of pages on the Saivryth site with information about the various classes and races available to a player for game. And I am slowly providing information on the various Kingdoms to give players a decent understanding to add to the background of their characters.
And there you have it, a simple breakdown of how to create a character for game in the World of Saivryth.
RGM
http://www.saivryth.org 