Life events! in making a Character?

[goopit]

Life events! in making a Character?

I really hope they keep the Life Events from the original PNPRPG. I'm sure a lot of the people who played the PNPRPG. I talked about this in the Witcher forum as well.

for those who don't know you basically roll dice to see what'll happen in a particular year of your characters life.

Try this random character generator here http://www.moosh.net/cp2020/lifepath-form.html


Those events could be done something like this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk3h7DboE_Q
after the player creates their character. We'd have random(or not) events hurled at us and we have to react to our fate which have consequences as random events later on in the game. Try using the character generator and see what you get.

Age16 could give you a be a summon calling a biker gang with your cellphone for a help in a firefight similar to GTA4's Dwayne but you could only use it once.
Age19 could be a random event where she tries to kill you.
Age22&24 are pretty self explanatory but really cool if implemented.
Age23 could be a sidequest similar to http://gta.wikia.com/That_Special_Someone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGx1Y81i2oY
Where a faction you're helping just suddenly calls you up and says that they've found the murderer of your loved ones which you have to visit, small dramatic cutscene like the video above and a choice whether to spare him or not.

A different one this time.

Age16 self explanatory you'd have to pay some surgeon to fix it later on
Age17 You start with more money awesome!
Age23 Maybe you'd suddenly find your car all fucked up and a letter from your ex-lover. There could be small sidequest where you retaliate. Also your character could be gay which could be something?

The two characters would live different lives and maybe would have different perspectives on how situations in the game could be handled similar to how in DA:O an elf could be a victim of human bigotry and therefore hate humans and make decisions against the humans benefit.

 

[username_3643744]

I've been wondering about this too. I think it could be cool; adding random encounters and gameplay. The problem I foresee though is that its RNG and consequently, it could screw your character (you want an attractive toon but now they're disfigured) or make them completely OP. This could lead to people doing things like remaking their character over and over again until they get one that's super awesome. If that happens, whats the point in Life Events in the first place?

 

[Purpleknight]

I think that, if you want Life Events to have any impact through the game, then the "choices" you do for Life Events would be pretty limited. On the other hand, doing Life Events randomly would be bad, basically because in an RPG you make your character, and do random something that is part of the growth of your character goes against that.

Though it would be a nice thing, more depth to our charas

 

[Captain_Crash]

A simple backstory like the ones on the PNP pic above will be awesome. I often like to create my own backstories for my characters so don't want it to be written out totally for me. A bit of direction is always nice though.

 

[Sydanyo]

On the other hand, doing Life Events randomly would be bad, basically because in an RPG you make your character, and do random something that is part of the growth of your character goes against that.

The lifepath is either chosen, or randomly rolled in Cyberpunk 2020. I've personally seen no point in choosing the lifepath myself ever, and I've played the game quite a few times on quite a few different characters. Who would ever choose something bad? The whole point of rolling the lifepath is to see what fate has in store for your character. That's what makes this system interesting, as opposed to many others.

 

[spiderword]

I would like to see Life Events too. Maybe they are a bit too random but it could be something to work on at least to grant us Players our "Unique" main char.

 

[Purpleknight]

The lifepath is either chosen, or randomly rolled in Cyberpunk 2020. I've personally seen no point in choosing the lifepath myself ever, and I've played the game quite a few times on quite a few different characters. Who would ever choose something bad? The whole point of rolling the lifepath is to see what fate has in store for your character. That's what makes this system interesting, as opposed to many others.

Ah ok, I'm just another ignorant dude concerning Cyberpunk 2020 (and PnP in general) so I didn't know XD. When I role-play, which is not very much, I always could make up a lot of my past inside some limits, so it was just kind of weird to me to see this XD

But as I said before, it could be a nice thing. It has potential for adding uniqueness to the charas and to some secondary quests maybe.

 

[username_3643744]

If they were to implement it, I would hope that they would take out any event that would alter base stats, for better or worse. Limiting it to personal encounters and such would be cool as they could tie those random elements back into the game as you play, i.e. friend and enemy encounters.

 

[goopit]

The lifepath is either chosen, or randomly rolled in Cyberpunk 2020. I've personally seen no point in choosing the lifepath myself ever, and I've played the game quite a few times on quite a few different characters. Who would ever choose something bad? The whole point of rolling the lifepath is to see what fate has in store for your character. That's what makes this system interesting, as opposed to many others.

Yeah I agree, I always roll the stuff that happens but how I handle the situation is when I choose. If we ever get Life paths, The player should have an option to choose since some people just want to make their perfect character. It should feel like cheating though.

If they were to implement it, I would hope that they would take out any event that would alter base stats, for better or worse. Limiting it to personal encounters and such would be cool as they could tie those random elements back into the game as you play, i.e. friend and enemy encounters.

I'm against that I want them to mess with absolutely everything from base stats to appearance. It's part of how unique and lucky your character is.

 

[kilravok]

I am all for Life Experience. If they are choose-able then all choices need to be mixed blessings, like in Fallout. If they are either good or bad, then they need to be random.
Maybe a mix of? Giving random events that happened with the prompt to choose how one responded to the event there and then, and that giving the actual mods and tweaks?

Besides, I would totally choose bad events, not for character construction points but for the back-story. All my heroes are the tragic avenger or unwilling anti-hero type.

 

[Chewin3]

It's an interesting concept, but it depends entirely on how it is implemented into the game. Whether certain events happen before the start of the game in our childhood or there are time skips in the main storyline for Life Experiences to be involved is fine by me.

However, a crucial aspect I hope CDPR will take into consideration when dealing with Life Experiences, is to make the player character proactive. If he / she isn't, and is instead a shortsighted character that lacks the ability to look forward and anticipate the consequences of his actions in earlier events in life, is something that deeply loathe. Frankly, if executed poorly (like in some games) these kinds of features tends to make me hate the PC.

 

[gregski]

I would prefer CDPR to come up with well written, interesting life stories for the characters, maybe even one, strong, general story for each class/gender than making it random and generic. Witcher games showed me how much a well defined protagonist adds to the actual role-playing.

I mean, if people would be able to adapt to some random generic life stories, they might as well adapt to a protagonist with his past described by CDPR's writers and having an actual meaning and place in the narrative.

 

[ChaosWolf1982]

I would prefer CDPR to come up with well written, interesting life stories for the characters, maybe even one, strong, general story for each class/gender than making it random and generic. Witcher games showed me how much a well defined protagonist adds to the actual role-playing.

I mean, if people would be able to adapt to some random generic life stories, they might as well adapt to a protagonist with his past described by CDPR's writers and having an actual meaning and place in the narrative.

To be fair, Witcher's protagonist was so well defined because they were going off stuff from the books, not doing stuff from scratch.

 

[Yngh]

Sounds like a great idea, but it's a 1/0 thing. They either have to do it well or not do it at all. By "well" I mean sth that has real impact. If it's just about biography with no consequences besides pure RP, they might just as well give us the ability to write the biography of our character ourselves.

 

[username_3642020]

Having random life events always seemed to give character more depth for me, it made them feel more real than going through and picking/choosing parts. Sure, it takes a bit of the creation out of your hands, but at the same time life is full of some pretty random stuff. How you decide to take your character forward from that, and basing their motivational/personal growth on those events has always been a huge part of the fun. It'd probably be tough to implement, but if they can have a few things, say a couple of generic enemies/friends/lovers and then mix them randomly at creation would be an interesting way to work it.

 

[gregski]

To be fair, Witcher's protagonist was so well defined because they were going off stuff from the books, not doing stuff from scratch.

Fair enough. So let's look at Iorveth and Roche then - can you even imagine TW2 without one of them? Because I can't. These chars were created from scratch and they simply own many other RPGs main protagonists, while being "2nd plan" characters themselves. For me these 2 examples would be enough to trust CDPR with character creation process (I mean the backstory, not stats/appearance/class etc).

 

[braindancer12]

this would be really cool

 

[goopit]

I would prefer CDPR to come up with well written, interesting life stories for the characters, maybe even one, strong, general story for each class/gender than making it random and generic. Witcher games showed me how much a well defined protagonist adds to the actual role-playing.

I mean, if people would be able to adapt to some random generic life stories, they might as well adapt to a protagonist with his past described by CDPR's writers and having an actual meaning and place in the narrative.

You should give actually making the character in the PNPRPG a try before you say that. Making your own story is a huge part of Cyberpunk 2020's and PnP in general.

 

[blank_redge]

Hm. While I personally like the idea of a Life Event generator, I don't think everyone would be on board with it. I'd like to see it as an optional toggle at character creation.

I'd like the Life Event rolls to affect gameplay in a subtle fashion; extra / different dialogue choices in some scenarios, exclusive NPCs / contacts, etc., alongside any events that overtly affect character generation.

 

[wisdom000]

The lifepath is either chosen, or randomly rolled in Cyberpunk 2020. I've personally seen no point in choosing the lifepath myself ever, and I've played the game quite a few times on quite a few different characters. Who would ever choose something bad? The whole point of rolling the lifepath is to see what fate has in store for your character. That's what makes this system interesting, as opposed to many others.

Um.... not really...

The appearance and personality options are all choose or roll, this is true... but the life events table is strictly rolled. Some of the options inside the life events table can be chosen, but they are minor and deal with your players reactions to a given thing, not whether or not the given thing happens...

Also, when it comes to life events, it is much better if the process is done with the player rolling and the GM interpreting the results...