Dusting off Runequest Modern

[Utgardloki]

Some of these ideas were posted before, but I think I am looking over my notes for adapting the Runequest system to the modern era again, and thought I'd see how everything looks when it's put together.

I like to start with creating characters. The relevant rule changes for creating modern characters include the following:

Also do the same [i.e. roll the dice] for the pseudo-characteristics Wealth, Training, Luck, Advantages, and Hero Points. You may swap scores freely among these characteristics and pseudo-characteristics.

I came up with the idea of using "pseudo-characteristics" for character creation to allow for players to create wealthy characters, characters with a lot of training, etc. In fact, the Training pseudo-characteristic largely replaces professions, because instead of choosing a profession, the players use the skill points granted by the Training to create a character with the appropriate skills.

Female characters make the following adjustments to their characteristics after all swaps are made: -2 to Strength, -4 to Size, +2 to Dexterity, and +2 to Charisma..

This rule was very controversial when I posted it before. My intention is to try to get a "TV Land" feel.

Wealth is used to determine your background, whether you were born in a rich family or just struggling to get by. It does not have a lot of effect on your current life, since you are assumed to be making a salary, and your equipment is supplied by Munroe Associates. But if you have a high wealth score, that means that you have substantial resources of your own. Your approximate net wealth at the start of the game is as follows:

Wealth
3-4 1d10 dollars
5-6 1d10 x 10 dollars
7-8 1d10 x 100 dollars
9-10 1d10 x 1000 dollars
11-12 1d10 x 10,000 dollars
13-14 1d10 x 100,000 dollars
15-16 1d10 x 1,000,000 dollars
17 1d10 x 10,000,000 dollars
18 1d10 x 100,000,000 dollars
19 1d10 x 1,000,000,000 dollars
20 1d10 x 10,000,000,000 dollars
21 1d10 x 100,000,000,000 dollars

Note that this includes the money in your bank account, any cash you have at hand, and the worth of all your property, but does not include your debts. Excessive debt can be bought as a disadvantage.

I do not know if I actually provided a way for beginning characters to increase Wealth to the 19-21 range, but Bill Gates would have a Wealth of 21.

Luck is used as an alternative to spending Hero Points to save your skin. Instead of spending a Hero Point to redo the die roll, you can roll your Luck or less on d20. If you succeed, the event being rolled does not happen (the attack misses, the bomb does not go off, etc) or else you somehow escape consequences from the event (you land on a soft substance instead of jagged rocks, you are propelled clear of the blast, etc), and your Luck decrements by 1. If you fail, the event does happen, and you’ll probably be rolling another character.


I do not know if I will be keeping Luck as a pseudo-characteristic.

Advantages are used to buy advantages during character creation. They may also be used to increase your characteristics on a one-for-one basis. Any Advantage points not used during character creation have no effect.


My concept is for TV-type characters who may have special abilities that are not easily modelled by a pure skill-buying system, although a lot of the advantages I came up with ended up being changed to skills.

To determine your skills, follow the following steps:

A. Graduate from High School: All PC’s (unless otherwise noted) are assumed to have graduated from high school in a modern country, and to have been at least motivated enough to pass most of their exams and pick up a basic background of knowledge. Thus, they gain the following skills:

Drive Automobile +20%
Lore (World) +20%
Lore (Science) +5%
Math +10%
Speak Native Language +(INT*10%)
Read Native Language +(INT*5%)

In addition, characters have INT*10 points that they can divide among different skills, with no more than 20 points going to any particular skill.

B. Use your Training: Multiply Training times Intelligence. This is the number of skill points you can divide among your desired skills as desired, but you are limited to using no more than 1/3 your skill points for defensive skills such as Dodge and Parry, and no more than 1/3 your skill points for attack skills.

C. Define your special interests: You get 70 points that must be used to define your special interests. These points have to be spent on the following types of skills:

Lore (any lore skills other than World Lore)
Craft skills
Sports or games
Hobbies such as photography or mathematics



Thoughts? Comments? Cries of outrage?

 

[Magistus]

You may want to check out BloodQuest, by Postmortem Studio.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=24054&it=1

 

[duncan_disorderly]

Some of these ideas were posted before, but I think I am looking over my notes for adapting the Runequest system to the modern era again, and thought I'd see how everything looks when it's put together.

I may have said some of this when you posted before...

I like to start with creating characters. The relevant rule changes for creating modern characters include the following:

Also do the same [i.e. roll the dice] for the pseudo-characteristics Wealth, Training, Luck, Advantages, and Hero Points. You may swap scores freely among these characteristics and pseudo-characteristics.

I came up with the idea of using "pseudo-characteristics" for character creation to allow for players to create wealthy characters, characters with a lot of training, etc. In fact, the Training pseudo-characteristic largely replaces professions, because instead of choosing a profession, the players use the skill points granted by the Training to create a character with the appropriate skills.

I'm not necessarily convinced you need all these additional characteristics...

Female characters make the following adjustments to their characteristics after all swaps are made: -2 to Strength, -4 to Size, +2 to Dexterity, and +2 to Charisma..

This rule was very controversial when I posted it before. My intention is to try to get a "TV Land" feel.

I'd sooner not make any adjustments - the 3-18 roll is not so finely tuned as to exclude half the population from some of it's divisions. I certainly wouldn't go for changes as big as this!

Wealth is used to determine your background, whether you were born in a rich family or just struggling to get by. It does not have a lot of effect on your current life, since you are assumed to be making a salary, and your equipment is supplied by Munroe Associates. But if you have a high wealth score, that means that you have substantial resources of your own. Your approximate net wealth at the start of the game is as follows:

Wealth
3-4 1d10 dollars
5-6 1d10 x 10 dollars
7-8 1d10 x 100 dollars
9-10 1d10 x 1000 dollars
11-12 1d10 x 10,000 dollars
13-14 1d10 x 100,000 dollars
15-16 1d10 x 1,000,000 dollars
17 1d10 x 10,000,000 dollars
18 1d10 x 100,000,000 dollars
19 1d10 x 1,000,000,000 dollars
20 1d10 x 10,000,000,000 dollars
21 1d10 x 100,000,000,000 dollars

Note that this includes the money in your bank account, any cash you have at hand, and the worth of all your property, but does not include your debts. Excessive debt can be bought as a disadvantage.

I do not know if I actually provided a way for beginning characters to increase Wealth to the 19-21 range, but Bill Gates would have a Wealth of 21.

This is one way to do it, and looks reasonableish - depending on yor definition of "all your property" and how you envisage your starting players being equiped. It looks like the "average" character will start with around $500,000 - is this high or low for your expectations (It sounds high for a "just out of high school"/"Just graduated form University"/"Just started first job" type "typical" RPG adventurer. On the other hand it could be low for someone with their own house, car etc etc...

Also it doesn't tie in well to profession - Doctors and Lawyers should generally have more "wealth" than journalists, school teachers and motor mechanics.

You may also want to skip "actual money" wealth and look at something akin to the CoC "Credit Rating"

Luck is used as an alternative to spending Hero Points to save your skin. Instead of spending a Hero Point to redo the die roll, you can roll your Luck or less on d20. If you succeed, the event being rolled does not happen (the attack misses, the bomb does not go off, etc) or else you somehow escape consequences from the event (you land on a soft substance instead of jagged rocks, you are propelled clear of the blast, etc), and your Luck decrements by 1. If you fail, the event does happen, and you’ll probably be rolling another character.


I do not know if I will be keeping Luck as a pseudo-characteristic.

I don't think you need both Luck and the HQ mechanic. Can you use both in a desparate attempt to save your life?

"traditionally" RQ used POW*5 as "Luck" where such a mechanic was needed.

We once used a homebrew rule in a MERP game that had two luck statistics "High Luck" and "Low Luck". Low Luck was rolled for those elements of chance, or where a random determination of who was to be affected was required, so a character with a low "Low Luck" score was the one likely to be stopped by the guards for questioning, or in the path of the boulder tumbling down the hill etc. High Luck was rolled to avoid the potentially lethal MERP critical hit system - A player could choose to roll High Luck to reduce the severity of the critical, at a cost of loss of experience for that sessions adventure. A character with a high "High Luck" score led a relatively charmed life. Characters with low "Low Luck" and high "High luck" were trouble magnets who always managed to escape the worst effects of their misfortune...

Advantages are used to buy advantages during character creation. They may also be used to increase your characteristics on a one-for-one basis. Any Advantage points not used during character creation have no effect.


My concept is for TV-type characters who may have special abilities that are not easily modelled by a pure skill-buying system, although a lot of the advantages I came up with ended up being changed to skills.

I don't generally like the idea of advantages and disadvantages as they generally seem to lead to mini-maxing and very stereotyped characters.

If you must have them then rolling the points available on a 3-18 scale seems like it could end up with very unbalanced characters. I'd rethingk this whole section - especially if most of your advantages ended up as skills anyway.

To determine your skills, follow the following steps:

A. Graduate from High School: All PC’s (unless otherwise noted) are assumed to have graduated from high school in a modern country, and to have been at least motivated enough to pass most of their exams and pick up a basic background of knowledge. Thus, they gain the following skills:

Drive Automobile +20%
Lore (World) +20%
Lore (Science) +5%
Math +10%
Speak Native Language +(INT*10%)
Read Native Language +(INT*5%)

In addition, characters have INT*10 points that they can divide among different skills, with no more than 20 points going to any particular skill.

B. Use your Training: Multiply Training times Intelligence. This is the number of skill points you can divide among your desired skills as desired, but you are limited to using no more than 1/3 your skill points for defensive skills such as Dodge and Parry, and no more than 1/3 your skill points for attack skills.

C. Define your special interests: You get 70 points that must be used to define your special interests. These points have to be spent on the following types of skills:

Lore (any lore skills other than World Lore)
Craft skills
Sports or games
Hobbies such as photography or mathematics

Makes me think of CoC's "EDUcation" stat (which IARC is rolled on 3d6+3).
I think I'd rather have some "profession" templates. Pick a Profession template and spend your EDU/TRAining points on those skills. Some professions require a minimum level of EDU/TRA (no Doctors with an EDU of 3 for instance). You can relate Wealth/Credit rating to the profession too.
Not sure of the point of the restrictions on the "special interests". "Combat fixated" players will claim that Judo, boxing or wrestling are sports and their hobbies include shooting and firearm maintenance...

 

[Utgardloki]

I think these comments are pretty much new, and they are helpful.

Also do the same [i.e. roll the dice] for the pseudo-characteristics Wealth, Training, Luck, Advantages, and Hero Points. You may swap scores freely among these characteristics and pseudo-characteristics.

I'm not necessarily convinced you need all these additional characteristics...

I am considering whether this is the best list, but I am finding that pseudo-characteristics are of great use for making the kind of character a player may want.

Want someone rich? Swap your highest stat for Wealth and you may not have the highest set of stats in the party, but you'll have a lot of toys. Want to be a successful doctor? Make sure your Wealth stat is above 13.

Most of these pseudo-characteristics have no effect after character creation. Wealth is an exception, because measuring Wealth on a 3-18 scale is similar to modern RPGs like D20 Modern -- in that case if you gain or lose a lot of money, your Wealth score would change to reflect your new circumstances.

I am not decided if I need both Luck and Hero Points. Training is intended to eliminate the need to define a lot of professions by allowing PCs to build their own.

Wealth is used to determine your background, whether you were born in a rich family or just struggling to get by. It does not have a lot of effect on your current life, since you are assumed to be making a salary, and your equipment is supplied by Munroe Associates. But if you have a high wealth score, that means that you have substantial resources of your own. Your approximate net wealth at the start of the game is as follows:

Wealth
3-4 1d10 dollars
5-6 1d10 x 10 dollars
7-8 1d10 x 100 dollars
9-10 1d10 x 1000 dollars
11-12 1d10 x 10,000 dollars
13-14 1d10 x 100,000 dollars
15-16 1d10 x 1,000,000 dollars
17 1d10 x 10,000,000 dollars
18 1d10 x 100,000,000 dollars
19 1d10 x 1,000,000,000 dollars
20 1d10 x 10,000,000,000 dollars
21 1d10 x 100,000,000,000 dollars

Note that this includes the money in your bank account, any cash you have at hand, and the worth of all your property, but does not include your debts. Excessive debt can be bought as a disadvantage.

I do not know if I actually provided a way for beginning characters to increase Wealth to the 19-21 range, but Bill Gates would have a Wealth of 21.

This is one way to do it, and looks reasonableish - depending on yor definition of "all your property" and how you envisage your starting players being equiped. It looks like the "average" character will start with around $500,000 - is this high or low for your expectations (It sounds high for a "just out of high school"/"Just graduated form University"/"Just started first job" type "typical" RPG adventurer. On the other hand it could be low for someone with their own house, car etc etc...

Well, the first character I generated under this system ended up being a millionaire with a net wealth of exactly $1,000,000. That was with a wealth roll of 13 and a 1D10 roll of 10. This includes your house and car, but not your mortgage, so for this character perhaps she has a couple of other expensive toys from her rich father, such as her own yacht.

I wouldn't use this system for randomly generated NPCs, but it should be reasonable for PCs. The PCs are employed in a job where they are getting a good salary, so it would be reasonable to have them on average better off than the rest of the population on average.

On the other hand, I kind of expect Wealth to be used as a dump stat, as it arguably has the least effect on the game I am planning.

Also it doesn't tie in well to profession - Doctors and Lawyers should generally have more "wealth" than journalists, school teachers and motor mechanics.

Players are responsible for making characters appropriate to the profession they wish. If they don't want to swap a high stat into Wealth, then maybe the PC has a gambling problem that causes them to lose most of the money he makes.

Advantages are used to buy advantages during character creation. They may also be used to increase your characteristics on a one-for-one basis. Any Advantage points not used during character creation have no effect.


My concept is for TV-type characters who may have special abilities that are not easily modelled by a pure skill-buying system, although a lot of the advantages I came up with ended up being changed to skills.

I don't generally like the idea of advantages and disadvantages as they generally seem to lead to mini-maxing and very stereotyped characters.

If you must have them then rolling the points available on a 3-18 scale seems like it could end up with very unbalanced characters. I'd rethingk this whole section - especially if most of your advantages ended up as skills anyway.

I think I need advantages for the sort of campaign I intend to run. Advantages can also be used to purchase a different race -- if you want to be an Amazon or an Android, you'd use your advantages to purchase that racial template, similar to the way it works in BESM D20.

I'll post more about advantages later. Having a random amount go for advantages creates a wider variety of characters than having a set amount. I think that should work out for this group and this campaign, especially since abilities can be swapped around.

To determine your skills, follow the following steps:

A. Graduate from High School: All PC’s (unless otherwise noted) are assumed to have graduated from high school in a modern country, and to have been at least motivated enough to pass most of their exams and pick up a basic background of knowledge. Thus, they gain the following skills:

Drive Automobile +20%
Lore (World) +20%
Lore (Science) +5%
Math +10%
Speak Native Language +(INT*10%)
Read Native Language +(INT*5%)

In addition, characters have INT*10 points that they can divide among different skills, with no more than 20 points going to any particular skill.

B. Use your Training: Multiply Training times Intelligence. This is the number of skill points you can divide among your desired skills as desired, but you are limited to using no more than 1/3 your skill points for defensive skills such as Dodge and Parry, and no more than 1/3 your skill points for attack skills.

C. Define your special interests: You get 70 points that must be used to define your special interests. These points have to be spent on the following types of skills:

Lore (any lore skills other than World Lore)
Craft skills
Sports or games
Hobbies such as photography or mathematics

Makes me think of CoC's "EDUcation" stat (which IARC is rolled on 3d6+3).

I think I'd rather have some "profession" templates. Pick a Profession template and spend your EDU/TRAining points on those skills. Some professions require a minimum level of EDU/TRA (no Doctors with an EDU of 3 for instance). You can relate Wealth/Credit rating to the profession too.

I remember rolling up characters in Call of Cthulhu. In my opinion,the CoC profession templates made character creation more complicated, but didn't add much to the game. In my system, players are free to look at the CoC book for guidelines on what skills to buy.

Not sure of the point of the restrictions on the "special interests". "Combat fixated" players will claim that Judo, boxing or wrestling are sports and their hobbies include shooting and firearm maintenance...

The point is to have some sort of balance. If a combat monkey wants to take wrestling and shooting as sports, so be it. But by giving 70 "special interest" points I allow players to define special interests for their PCs without having to sacrifice profession, offense or defense.

One thing I am considering is making three Training pseudo-characteristics: Attack Training, Defense Training, and Profession Training. Perhaps Profession Training works as above (INT X Training skill points), while Attack Training and Defense Training both provide (10 X Training) skill points for those specific areas. The advantage would be to give players a budget for offense, defense, and profession skills.

Of course, a PC could then be a policeman and put a lot of the Profession Training skill points into Firearms and Judo.

Another option would be to just have Defense and Training, with Defense providing for that all-important Dodge skill.

I am strongly considering making a Defense pseudo-characteristic, and then giving PCs (10 X Defense) points in Dodge. Whether or not Luck will be retained, that is still up in the air. I think I'll retain Luck just as a last-ditch "nine lives" counter fallback similar to the Divine Intervention mechanic of classic Runequest. This way, I help encourage players to spend their Hero Points.

On the other hand, the Luck psuedo-characteristic is not really useful unless the campaign is going to last a while with the same PCs.

 

[Dr. Halflight]

An Alternative to Attack & Defense Pools of Points would be simpy raising they're base skills with a small expenditure of Hero Points at Character Creation, say 1-2 points & possibly a 1 point penalty per adventure HP award.

Give Dodge at 30+Dex-Siz
Make Base Close Combat Str+Dex+10
Make Base Range Combat Dex+20.

Another Alternative to a Professional Pool would be giving players a Professional Bonus at +X%. So wether I'm a Doctor, Accountant, Police Officer, or Computer Progammer, I'd have the corresponding Bonus at say +20%. Of course you could stagger the bonus based on the usefulness of the profession & the range of its bonus (say something like +10/20/30%). The bonus would modifiy any skill with a)GM approval or b)with the expenditure of a Hero Point (or Luck point if you end up using them) if you want to limit use. The Professional bonus could also provide the bonus to Attack & Defense.

I'm interested in taking MRQ into the modern setting, so if I can help, I'd like to.

 

[Utgardloki]

I think the characters generated by my system are going to end up being a little bit elite. Suits me fine -- the PCs should soon get a reputation for being formidable: people you want working for you and don't want working against you. My system should work with more flunky-ish characters -- just start the PCs out with the High School Graduate package and have them pick from a set of modern professions.

A note about the High School Graduate package: Since my proposed campaign is set in the 1970s, it does not include skills in computer usage. For characters from after 1995, add +10% Computer Usage.

 

[algauble]

Some of these ideas were posted before, but I think I am looking over my notes for adapting the Runequest system to the modern era again, and thought I'd see how everything looks when it's put together.

I like to start with creating characters. The relevant rule changes for creating modern characters include the following:

Also do the same [i.e. roll the dice] for the pseudo-characteristics Wealth, Training, Luck, Advantages, and Hero Points. You may swap scores freely among these characteristics and pseudo-characteristics.

I came up with the idea of using "pseudo-characteristics" for character creation to allow for players to create wealthy characters, characters with a lot of training, etc. In fact, the Training pseudo-characteristic largely replaces professions, because instead of choosing a profession, the players use the skill points granted by the Training to create a character with the appropriate skills.

I kinda like this idea, but I think you have way too many pseudo-characteristics, and I think the term 'pseudo-characteristic' sounds terrible (no offense, just giving an opinion). I'd suggest adding a single 'characteristic', maybe called Background, which could be used to buy Wealth, Advantages, Training, etc.

Female characters make the following adjustments to their characteristics after all swaps are made: -2 to Strength, -4 to Size, +2 to Dexterity, and +2 to Charisma..

This rule was very controversial when I posted it before. My intention is to try to get a "TV Land" feel.

I think you'll get more grief than genre-emulation out of this choice.

Wealth is used to determine your background, whether you were born in a rich family or just struggling to get by. It does not have a lot of effect on your current life, since you are assumed to be making a salary, and your equipment is supplied by Munroe Associates. But if you have a high wealth score, that means that you have substantial resources of your own. Your approximate net wealth at the start of the game is as follows:

Wealth
3-4 1d10 dollars
5-6 1d10 x 10 dollars
7-8 1d10 x 100 dollars
9-10 1d10 x 1000 dollars
11-12 1d10 x 10,000 dollars
13-14 1d10 x 100,000 dollars
15-16 1d10 x 1,000,000 dollars
17 1d10 x 10,000,000 dollars
18 1d10 x 100,000,000 dollars
19 1d10 x 1,000,000,000 dollars
20 1d10 x 10,000,000,000 dollars
21 1d10 x 100,000,000,000 dollars

Note that this includes the money in your bank account, any cash you have at hand, and the worth of all your property, but does not include your debts. Excessive debt can be bought as a disadvantage.

I do not know if I actually provided a way for beginning characters to increase Wealth to the 19-21 range, but Bill Gates would have a Wealth of 21.

Luck is used as an alternative to spending Hero Points to save your skin. Instead of spending a Hero Point to redo the die roll, you can roll your Luck or less on d20. If you succeed, the event being rolled does not happen (the attack misses, the bomb does not go off, etc) or else you somehow escape consequences from the event (you land on a soft substance instead of jagged rocks, you are propelled clear of the blast, etc), and your Luck decrements by 1. If you fail, the event does happen, and you’ll probably be rolling another character.

Actually, I like adding a Luck stat. I always thought using POW for luck and willpower and creativity and magical aptitude and whatever else was needed in whatever particular iteration of brp was being discussed was spreading the POW stat too thin.

I do not know if I will be keeping Luck as a pseudo-characteristic.

Advantages are used to buy advantages during character creation. They may also be used to increase your characteristics on a one-for-one basis. Any Advantage points not used during character creation have no effect.


My concept is for TV-type characters who may have special abilities that are not easily modelled by a pure skill-buying system, although a lot of the advantages I came up with ended up being changed to skills.

To determine your skills, follow the following steps:

A. Graduate from High School: All PC’s (unless otherwise noted) are assumed to have graduated from high school in a modern country, and to have been at least motivated enough to pass most of their exams and pick up a basic background of knowledge. Thus, they gain the following skills:

Drive Automobile +20%
Lore (World) +20%
Lore (Science) +5%
Math +10%
Speak Native Language +(INT*10%)
Read Native Language +(INT*5%)

In addition, characters have INT*10 points that they can divide among different skills, with no more than 20 points going to any particular skill.

B. Use your Training: Multiply Training times Intelligence. This is the number of skill points you can divide among your desired skills as desired, but you are limited to using no more than 1/3 your skill points for defensive skills such as Dodge and Parry, and no more than 1/3 your skill points for attack skills.

C. Define your special interests: You get 70 points that must be used to define your special interests. These points have to be spent on the following types of skills:

Lore (any lore skills other than World Lore)
Craft skills
Sports or games
Hobbies such as photography or mathematics



Thoughts? Comments? Cries of outrage?

I remember you talking about skill specializations in the past. Are those still in? If so, how do they work? I seem to remember there was double-digit addition involved... not too big a deal, but it's another one of those things that inevitably elicit criticism.
As for advantages, I don't believe that it's possible to out-GURPS GURPS. If I wanted to add advantages and disadvantages to RQ I would take a freeform, player-defined approach, and probably just import the aspects from Spirit of the Century (also Open Content, I believe, http://www.crackmonkey.org/~nick/loyhargil/fate3/fate3.html), and basically equate Hero Points and Fate Points. One point of Background could be used to buy one unit of Training (say, Int x5%), or one aspect (advantage/disadvantage/etc, perhaps you could specify that certain specific advantages like "Android" require two aspects), or one level of wealth (I'd cut back on the number of levels that you have), etc, as needed.

 

[soltakss]

Actually, I like adding a Luck stat. I always thought using POW for luck and willpower and creativity and magical aptitude and whatever else was needed in whatever particular iteration of brp was being discussed was spreading the POW stat too thin.

The idea was that the more POW you had, the more in tune with the universe you were, and hence the luckier you were.

It doesn't really make sense, especially as POW can change quite easily.

It also doesn't reflect the fact that a powerful magician might be very unlucky or a magically weak person might be very lucky.

So, I'd use a Luck Characteristic. I might even introduce it into my RQ game at the moment.

For a campaign involving oriental PCs/NPCs, I'd also introduce a CHI characteristic with Ki Points (KPs) being temporary CHI, spent on the Ki skills from Land of Ninja. You can use them for Chinese or Indian martial artists quite easily and they needn't be restricted to the ones in the book. So, someone with CHI 10 wanting to create a perfect letter using Calligraphy Ki would spend one KP, reducing KPs to 9. This allows people to train their CHI and to specialise even further.

If you had Psionics in the game, I'd use the PSI characteristic as well. I'm not sure how it would be used, but I'd keep it separate from POW.

So, you could easily have EDU, LUC, CHI, PSI, WLT and BAC as extra Characteristics.

 

[Utgardloki]

I think I will want to rework the wealth table a little bit. It is too easy to be a millionaire the way I currently have it.

I am kind of stuck with the range 3-21, with most PCs in the 8-18 area. But it should be harder to get to the higher wealth ranges.

As for the system used in games like D20 Modern where there is a Wealth score and wealth rolls, I think I can go in that direction. The wealth levels I've defined are used to determine how much money your character has available, and a "Finance" skill roll can be used to buy things that are a significant fraction of your net worth.

For example, if your Wealth is 13 and you want to buy something that costs 500 dollars, you don't have to roll. But if you want to buy something for 5,000 dollars, you need to make a roll. If you want to buy something for 500,000 dollars, you can't do it.

This implies that I should have "disposable income" columns in my table indicated when a Finance roll is needed.

Finance would be a skill like any other, defaulting to INT+POW.

I'll play around with the table and see if I can get a slightly more realistic result.

 

[Utgardloki]

My new and improved Wealth Table is as follows:

Wealth
3-4 1d10 dollars
5-6 1d10 x 10 dollars
7-8 1d10 x 100 dollars
9-10 1d10 x 1000 dollars
11-14 1d10 x 10,000 dollars
15-16 1d10 x 100,000 dollars
17 1d10 x 1,000,000 dollars
18 1d10 x 10,000,000 dollars
19 1d10 x 100,000,000 dollars
20 1d10 x 1,000,000,000 dollars
21 1d10 x 10,000,000,000 dollars

Changes:

1. Widened the range for 1d10 X 10,000 dollars, which makes for a broad "middle class".

2. Reduced the highest range to 1d10 x 10,000,000,000 dollars, taking out one wealth range.

3. A score of 17 is now necessary to be a millionaire, although with a score as low as 15, it's possible to have $1,000,000 if you roll a 10. The assumption is that when you pay your bills you dip slightly under a million dollars, so you are just "almost" a millionaire.

I am still not entirely satisfied.

 

[Utgardloki]

I've generated a character to test the rules I developed. I made a few modifications to my document, which don't really impinge on running a modern setting or not, but were tweaked to help create the kinds of characters I envision. I'll note the changes where relevant.

The concept I had was of a Greek archeologist who excelled at swimming. The rolls for characteristics and pseudo-characteristics came out as follows:

STR 11, CON 19, DEX 15, INT 10, POW 16, CHA 18, SIZ 7. (one of my rules allows for rolling three six-sided dice and dividing them among the characteristics.

Wealth 13, Training 9, Luck 10, Advantages 11, Hero Points 10.

Her age is 19.

I added a step to generating skills as follows: roll 1D12 x 5% and add to your Dodge. Special interest skill points were limited to 30 points added to any particular skill. Unfortunately, with a Training of 9 and INT of 10, that only gives her 90 points to develope her profession. Her skill levels came out as follows:

Athletics 66%, Dodge 48%, Drive Automobile 46%, Drive Motorboat 46%, Lore (Archeology) 35%, Lore (Science) 15%, Lore (World) 30%, Math 20%, Read English 52%, Read Greek 60%, Scuba Operation 40%, Speak English 52%, Speak Greek 110%, Swim 125%.

For advantages I gave her Bilingual, which grants her +INTx5% for Reading and Speaking a second language, Extraordinary Attractiveness, which grants a 10% bonus for applicable skill rolls, and Skill Talent (Swimming), which increases the number of points she gets from improvement rolls, and I spent 6 of her 10 Hero Points for Improved Lung Capacity, which doubles the amount of time she can hold her breath.

Overall seems like a decent starting 19 year old character who is a college student with extraordinary talent for aquatic adventures. Probably a bit too specialized, especially if she ends up spending most of her time in the desert.