The Corsairs game had a fair amount of group world-building: from the Dwarven islands to the north and the fish-squeezers of the nearby floating isles, to the roaming rogues of the fields of Teboa, the players all contributed a bit to the world. We ended up with the crew having their own sky ship, and the warbling wanderer who appeared to like sleeping in fish barrels being the vocal Captain.
There is an article in the Hexagram 2 about allowing characters to create a few NPCs: allies, foes, family and just people they may have met. They get experience points based on the quality and quantity. I am thinking the next Fantasy Trip game I run we may do the same thing. We did this for the Fate game as that is part of the character creation. Mongoose and Cepheus Traveller do the same thing: you can get extra skills if you have contacts with the other players during character generation (a thing I forgot about as we were generating characters that last game I think! But I did do the group package).
It would be nice to get them from the basic 32 point character to a 33 point character - that 1 extra DX can really make a difference!
And I think we could do the same thing with towns and regions, expanding out where they came from perhaps.
Basically, you got 1 XP per family/growing up NPC you create. A simple sentence or two, along with a name, is all that is needed. There would have to be a maximum number you can have, or else we may end up having all our adventurers come from huge families!
You get XP for people you may have met over the years before your group comes together. Bonus points if you can work in the other players.
The article had a max of 50 XP, but he also ran some gladiator style combats with the characters, giving them another 50XP. So that these were no longer fresh-faced characters but had some experiences under their belts.
I know I keep trying to do this with so far little real success, but I did not think of tying in XP for these backgrounds. And I think, as when we do get back to TFT it will be at a table (the only good way to run a game!) I'll follow this plan.
First, bring in a giant sheet of paper. I have a lot of large sheets of paper. Put a compass rose on there, and let the players determine where they are from by drawing it on the map. Be it a mountain range, a desert, a coast, something on the map and the name of their home town. That would be 10XP. Plus we have the beginning of a shared map. Nothing needs to be connected, and I can plop it anywhere in my existing world, just somewhere off the edges of my current maps if need be.
Next, they give an outline of their family: parents, siblings, cousins, creche mates, whatever makes sense for them. Each name and how they are related, and how they feel about the character, is 4 points, up to 20 points max maybe?
Next, if they are on the road, friends they have met, foes they have fought, names and how those people feel about them. This would be up to 20 points as well. Bonus points up to another 20 if they can have had interactions with the other players.
This would bring us up to 70 points, not enough to get an updated stat. But, as each game you get 30-100XP based on what is happening, by the end of the 1st session there would be enough to let them level up. And I do give bonus XP for role playing.
Anyway, tying in some leveling up with character generation I think would go over well.
Not sure when I will be running a game next, either Traveller or The Fantasy Trip. I am in the enviable position that everyone in my current group also wants to run games. The Fate game has another 3-6 weeks, depending on the GM and what we do, then our newest player wants to run an anthropomorphic game (I am planning on playing a Centaur who can shapeshift to a sugar glider. So far that's the whole character concept, but I'll be expanding on that. He has given us the rules but I've yet to actually read them). After that game I may be able to run one, not sure if someone else is in the queue! And I also need to continue working on the Cowboys and Dinosaur game.
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