[Forge-main] [FRINGE] Roles

[Ricardo Gladwell]

Hi All,

I've been doing some thinking about generic character creation for the
FRINGE roleplaying system. I had an idea that came to me one day when I
read that roleplaying is not about acting or telling a story
necessarily, but is about more about adopting certain roles: you play
yourself but as something else.

This led me to the concept of 'roles' - rather than have separate rules
for character classes, races, vampire clans, whatever, characters select
certain roles to play at character creation and as they gain experience.
For example, your elven wizard adventurer would be a combination of the
Adventurer, Elf and Wizards roles.

All roles do is give characters traits: some determine which traits a
character has, others give points to buy certain traits, and some give
access to traits.

Character creation becomes a process of determining what Roles are
available to characters and in which order they may be selected. This
divides roles into three separate categories:

Base Roles - or power roles, determine the basic power level of the
character, i.e. how much points a character has to spend on primary
traits, unique traits and additional secondary roles (see below). Sample
roles might include Commoner, Adventurer, Hero and Legendary Hero.

Primary Roles - or starting roles, are selected at character creation
and defines what the character is and are effectively unchangeable.
Examples of primary roles include vampire clan or race, such as Elf,
Dwarf and Human. Generally, primary roles determine a characters basic
abilities (Strength, Agility, etc).

Secondary Roles - or adoptive roles, determine what the character does,
i.e. as in D&D classes. Unlike base and primary roles secondary roles
can be selected after character creation, representing a characters
progression as he/she gains experience. Examples of secondary roles
include Wizard, Fighter, and Playwright. Generally, secondary roles give
access to skills most characters would normally not have access to, i.e.
magic skills.

So, an example of character creation would be:

1. GM selects base role for all characters
2. Players select primary role(s).
3. Players select abilities.
4. Players select secondary role(s).
5. Players select skills.
6. ...

As always, I value everyone's opinion so, please, let me know what you
guys think. Kind regards...

-- 
Ricardo Gladwell
President, Free Roleplaying Community
http://www.freeroleplay.org/
address@hidden