Being PC

[subplotkudzu]

Recently viktor_haagand I were having a discussion about the merits of using rulebook space for the character sheets of the source material's stars. Do such character sheets serve any of value?

 

So I just wanted to give a shout out to a game that got it right. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG's revised core rulebook has character sheets for each of the major characters, from Buffy and Giles down to Dawn and Tara, statted for their first appearance. Each character then has season by season and episode by episode text showing you where they improved and why. (For example, this entry for Willow, episode 2:20 "Go Fish: Willow shows her interest in leading interrogatories. Her Influence skill rises to two.")

 

As a GM this is exactly what I need. If I'm one of those people who wants to run a game set in 1990's Sunnydale or use one of these PCs as a guest star or major NPC (say, a campaign of Willow running a training coven in post-show continuity) then I have the characters prepared to the very moment I want to diverge the timeline. But even if I don't need then for that purpose, this set up also provides me with as detailed an example of character experience and progression as I could ever want - on par with chadu's ZOZ campaign example.

 

There's one other thing that this game does that I have never seen before. The tendency in licensed games (outside of supers settings) is to make the original heroes insanely skilled. It's rare that they produce stats that player designed characters can ever approach. In that light the decision to stat the starting Scoobies Xander and Willow as WORSE than a starting PC is an interesting one. The design team statted what they saw on the screen, which came out close but not exact to the hard and fast mechanics of character creation - all of the season 1 characters come close enough. It certainly gives the GM a tool to use on anyone complaining about how their starting White Hat sucks - you're better than Xander, and he got to save the day all the time.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

That must be a second edition innovation; my first edition doesn't have it, though it does have a general discussion of character progression. It sounds useful.

If you have a chance to pick up The Magic Box, I highly recommend it. It has the best rules I've ever seen for making up spells on the fly. I can send you my rules for spell research based on it if you think you'd like to take a look at them.

[mneme]

I wouldn't say they insanely skill up the original media as that they tend to underpower the game (compared to the media it's based on. But it amounts to the same thing.

That they -didn't- do this in Buffy is quite impressive.