White Star Hack Update: Characters

Now that baseball is over for the year (congrats to my KC Royals!), I'm putting in more time to working on cementing my White Star Hack rules. Today, I'm going to cover how character creation will work.

First off, use the normal attribute score generation method that you prefer. The scale of the bonuses has been changed to
1-3          -3
4-6          -2
7-9          -1
10-12  -/+ 0
13-15      +1
16-18      +2
Ever 3 points after 18 confers an additional +1 bonus

The Attributes essentially cover the same areas that they do in nearly all OSR games. However, the big change is that Intelligence dictates the number of starting skill points that a character has to spend on skills at level 1, so Intelligence will be very useful even to warrior types that typically don't need a high INT score.

Once attribute scores have been generated, you'll select your race. Races are structured much like 3E-era D&D races. There may be bonuses and/or penalties to attributes, special abilities, etc. Each race will also have access to six Broad Skills for free. Broad Skills are the gateways to more specialized skills. Purchasing Broad Skills is expensive, but there are no ranks. By purchasing a Broad Skill, a character can attempt any specialized skill (that can be used untrained) under than umbrella without an Untrained penalty, but they can only apply their attribute bonus to the skill roll.

Once the race is selected, the player then selects a class. There are 5 classes to choose from: Diplomat, Freelancer, Psion, Tech, and Warrior. Make a note of any special notes or abilities for the class and then spend skill points on skills. Each class has a list of skills that are tied to that class. Buying a rank in a specialized skill requires the character to first have that Broad Skill. So a Diplomat can't purchase a rank in Pistol without first paying the cost to purchase the "Modern Ranged Weapons" Broad Skill first, even then that is considered a cross-class skill for a Diplomat, unless the Diplomat's second class is Warrior. Purchasing Broad Skills costs 6 skill points, while class skill ranks only cost 1 point, and cross-class skills cost 2 points.

Instead of Alignments, the player will select a Moral Attitude and some character traits. These don't dictate the way the character is played, but can give the player an idea of how they wish their character to act, and they give the GM an idea of what to expect.

Once skills are set, the player then rolls for starting credits and purchases equipment.

Skills is going to be the most time-consuming part of the character creation process. Even then, compared to Alternity, the process moves much quicker since I've pared down the costs and number of points that are being dealt with.

Next up, I'll talk more in depth about how classes are structured.

Changes

I've got a couple announcements, one minor, one bigger (at least for the direction of the blog that is).

First off, I'll be adding some page tabs to the blog that collect posts pertaining to certain subjects. In case you think you missed something, want to easily find an old post, or want to catch up if you're new to the blog it'll be a lot easier to find what you're looking for.

Secondly, and more importantly, I'm going to take a stab at creating a hack of White Star. For those that don't know what White Star is, it's a sci-fi/space opera game based on the White Box version of the Swords & Wizardry rules. I use S&W for all my fantasy gaming because it's simple and easily expandable. I like White Star as it is for the most part, but there are certain things I prefer in my sci-fi games that WS just doesn't deliver on. Really, from what I've got in mind, only the basic rules will truly be WS with many other parts of the game being greatly changed or expanded to suit my tastes.

Why am I attempting this? Honestly, it's the desire to kit bash a lot of bits and pieces I like from various systems into a cohesive whole. I like fiddling with systems, and ever since I read WS I haven't been able to shake the desire to tear into it and see if I can make something that both I and my group will really like. That desire has really derailed a lot of my other pursuits in other games...which has lead to a greatly diminished post count on the blog.

Work on what I'm going to tag as "White Star Hack" is likely to put the breaks on new Savage Worlds and Rogue Space material, but I'm not giving up on those games. RS still sees a lot of play, and I'm 99% completed with my re-grouping of the SW rules to fit my needs for Mythic Space. In fact, a lot of new material after WSH is done will more than likely sport stats for all three systems.

So what will this hack of WS contain? Here's a preliminary list:

• A skill system modified from the great Alternity rules. In fact, much of the game is going to be geared towards the skill system, but I'm going to change up the points and costs to limit some of the math to keep character generation and advancement flowing quickly. 
• Race and Class separated. Racial Classes have never been a big favorite of mine, so I'm going to divorce the two in WSH. 
• 5 classes: Warriors (I haven't settled on that name, but Soldier, Mercenary, and the like are also being batted around), Rogues (also considering Freelancer and Scoundrel), Diplomats, Technicians (I may just call them "Techs"), and Psions. 
• Variable damage for weapons and gear drawn from many D20 sources like D20 Future.
• Changing around how monster stats are derived. I detailed some of these ideas here in the past. While some things like creature attack bonuses might be modified, much of that will likely stand. 
• Starship rules will largely remain unchanged from what is found in WS. 
• Expansion of Cybernetics rules. There will be more cybergear, rules on the installation of cybergear, and on the loss of humanity. 
• A simple mutations system.
• Skill-based Psionics
• More of a true toolbox feel with less overt Star Wars references. 

All in all, I hope to create something that I want to run and maybe give something that others may want to kick around as well that still feels light and fast and easy to run. While this hack will be crunchier than the White Star standard, I have no desire to bog the system down with over-complicated and over-drawn rules.