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Veldrain wrote:
The original Warzone rpg was the one and only time I have had a character die during generation. It was a confusing experience and took a few moments before I realized this setting was insane and perfect.

How/why did the character die before its "birth" on the tabletop?

 warboss wrote:

Veldrain wrote:
The original Warzone rpg was the one and only time I have had a character die during generation. It was a confusing experience and took a few moments before I realized this setting was insane and perfect.

How/why did the character die before its "birth" on the tabletop?

A lot of old-timey roleplaying games had random tables to generate a character's past, including stuff like past jobs, acquaintances, criminal contacts and so on.

Some of the more adventurous ones had random results that included the possibility of dying in a war, by accident, illness or whatever. Sometimes it was intended, sometimes it was the result of game mechanics: i.e. if a game had a rule that you died when you had negative toughness, and some results like 'old war wound' gave you toughness mali, you could roll badly and collect so many downgrades that your character was too weak to live

Traveller was notorious for very lethal character creation where about 1 in 10 would not make it to the game alive, but it also happened in Gamma World or RIFTS.

I vividly remember rolling for starting level of wealth in the old Mutant Chronicles RPG which could mean you were fabulously rich or living behind some bins in some forgotten alley in Luna.

Being kids we didn’t really have the nous to bring these sort of disparate characters together in an interesting way so of course all our guys were just made mega rich and kitted out with the finest Bauhaus kit. Good times!

Tsagualsa wrote:

 warboss wrote:

Veldrain wrote:
The original Warzone rpg was the one and only time I have had a character die during generation. It was a confusing experience and took a few moments before I realized this setting was insane and perfect.

How/why did the character die before its "birth" on the tabletop?

A lot of old-timey roleplaying games had random tables to generate a character's past, including stuff like past jobs, acquaintances, criminal contacts and so on.

Some of the more adventurous ones had random results that included the possibility of dying in a war, by accident, illness or whatever. Sometimes it was intended, sometimes it was the result of game mechanics: i.e. if a game had a rule that you died when you had negative toughness, and some results like 'old war wound' gave you toughness mali, you could roll badly and collect so many downgrades that your character was too weak to live

Traveller was notorious for very lethal character creation where about 1 in 10 would not make it to the game alive, but it also happened in Gamma World or RIFTS.

Was that the cas with Mutant Chronicles? I don't remember it happening in OG Rifts though I won't pretend that I memorized the entirety of the random backstory tables in the core book; I can't speak for the rest as I never played either. How did it happen in Rifts? Regardless, I can't say that I'd be a fan of the spread of that mechanic as someone who thinks that character death belongs in game or in backstory. YMMV.

Yep, in the RPG you could age your character a few years and in return you advance your career path and pick up a few stats. Risking it was usually the only way to start with a special forces type background. Instead of picking up a bad case of PTSD my character went out in a blaze of glory before I even knew him.

Veldrain wrote:
Yep, in the RPG you could age your character a few years and in return you advance your career path and pick up a few stats. Risking it was usually the only way to start with a special forces type background. Instead of picking up a bad case of PTSD my character went out in a blaze of glory before I even knew him.

Thanks. I suppose I'm not the target audience for that then. I'm ok with adding conditions due to rolled backstory but death seems to be a bit much during character creation IMO.

 warboss wrote:

Veldrain wrote:
Yep, in the RPG you could age your character a few years and in return you advance your career path and pick up a few stats. Risking it was usually the only way to start with a special forces type background. Instead of picking up a bad case of PTSD my character went out in a blaze of glory before I even knew him.

Thanks. I suppose I'm not the target audience for that then. I'm ok with adding conditions due to rolled backstory but death seems to be a bit much during character creation IMO.

It shows up a lot in life-path systems as a risk vs. reward limiter. In the Target editions of Mutant Chronicles, it only started to be a risk at age 45. Considering most characters start the career cycle at 16, this means you had ~14 career repetitions before you even started risking it. Most characters stopped well before then, so it generally only came up if you were too deep for your own good. Traveller had a similar method, though the risk was present all the time (as it was not simply aging that caused it).

The 2d20 version did away with risking death and simply had a hard cap on repetitions (while adding in ways to get on a specific career path so it was less luck-based). Life path systems are great for getting people with low setting investment in to a game because it gives them a "lived in" backstory from the jump, so you end up with far fewer one-note characters in a group that may not be familiar with the setting yet. Of course, earlier life path systems often had a lot of "test your luck" stuff as well, but it helps to think of character creation in these ones as a sort of game unto themselves rather than just a chargen method. With that said, getting rid of the death thing helped a lot of them out (though many still keep the harsh consequences that stop just short of death... except Infinity 2d20, but then death isn't usually an end there).

As for the setting itself, the aesthetics are a big part of it. You had a lot of great art backing up an evocative setting that mixed a lot of influences from the same well that 40k drank from. It very much feels like a 2000AD/Heavy Metal comic that you can play around in. It also had the good grace to die well before it became self-serious to the point where it was hard to tell if it was still in on the satire.

Luckily, Modiphius did a hell of a job giving the setting its proper swan song as they developed the RPG line for longer than Target ever did and released a fully realized iteration of the setting before giving the license up. It would be nice if it stuck around, but the line itself was fairly complete. If we never get another effort as good again for either the RPG or Warzone, then I can at least be happy with that. It would be nice to see Warzone get a proper send-off as well with modern minis line that did more than scratch the surface, but that is a bit of a bigger ask than a feature-complete RPG line.

Either way, a lot of us have fond memories of the setting and would love to see it done right after so many companies (including its progenitor) end up fumbling the ball with it. So far, RezNova hasn't given the best impression that they're the one, but they also haven't done any worse than the last few either. So we'll see (or we won't).

Never played MC rpg, but I am kinda obsessed with MC lately and I am wasting time browsing old books from time to time. There are some cool lore fragments hidden in the character creation process. One of the ways to obtain Capitol citizenship was serving 10 years in Freedom Brigades (penal/foreign fighters formation, not sure if ever introduced in any edition of Warzone). Bad rolls during the service period could end the life of the character.

Generally speaking, I am very curious what new sculpts from Res Nova will look like, Mortificator (Crenshaw?) was a solid step in the right direction.

 Ronin_eX wrote:

It shows up a lot in life-path systems as a risk vs. reward limiter. In the Target editions of Mutant Chronicles, it only started to be a risk at age 45. Considering most characters start the career cycle at 16, this means you had ~14 career repetitions before you even started risking it. Most characters stopped well before then, so it generally only came up if you were too deep for your own good. Traveller had a similar method, though the risk was present all the time (as it was not simply aging that caused it).

So did that have an effective bump in power associated with it as well? From the description, it sounds almost like being able to start a character at a higher level than others who don't push their luck. I'm not an advocate for soviet character generation where all characters must be exactly equal in power but, if that is the case, I don't think I could get behind that either. Admittedly, I am a fan of point based stats and classless character generation though and not of early 70's-90's random mechanics in generation.

Luckily, Modiphius did a hell of a job giving the setting its proper swan song as they developed the RPG line for longer than Target ever did and released a fully realized iteration of the setting before giving the license up. It would be nice if it stuck around, but the line itself was fairly complete. If we never get another effort as good again for either the RPG or Warzone, then I can at least be happy with that. It would be nice to see Warzone get a proper send-off as well with modern minis line that did more than scratch the surface, but that is a bit of a bigger ask than a feature-complete RPG line.

Either way, a lot of us have fond memories of the setting and would love to see it done right after so many companies (including its progenitor) end up fumbling the ball with it. So far, RezNova hasn't given the best impression that they're the one, but they also haven't done any worse than the last few either. So we'll see (or we won't).

I'm glad to hear that they had such a good run with their version of the RPG. Did the timing of that coincide with the Prodos/Archon minis game?

I like the art style. Discovering it was Paul Bonner made it make sense.

 warboss wrote:

 Ronin_eX wrote:

It shows up a lot in life-path systems as a risk vs. reward limiter. In the Target editions of Mutant Chronicles, it only started to be a risk at age 45. Considering most characters start the career cycle at 16, this means you had ~14 career repetitions before you even started risking it. Most characters stopped well before then, so it generally only came up if you were too deep for your own good. Traveller had a similar method, though the risk was present all the time (as it was not simply aging that caused it).

So did that have an effective bump in power associated with it as well? From the description, it sounds almost like being able to start a character at a higher level than others who don't push their luck. I'm not an advocate for soviet character generation where all characters must be exactly equal in power but, if that is the case, I don't think I could get behind that either. Admittedly, I am a fan of point based stats and classless character generation though and not of early 70's-90's random mechanics in generation.

Why would a fresh out of college accountant have the same power(stats? experience?) as a veteran special forces pulled off the front lines due to injury? This isn't d&d where your level stat is all that matters.

 Manu Miniatures wrote:
Never played MC rpg, but I am kinda obsessed with MC lately and I am wasting time browsing old books from time to time. There are some cool lore fragments hidden in the character creation process. One of the ways to obtain Capitol citizenship was serving 10 years in Freedom Brigades (penal/foreign fighters formation, not sure if ever introduced in any edition of Warzone). Bad rolls during the service period could end the life of the character.

Generally speaking, I am very curious what new sculpts from Res Nova will look like, Mortificator (Crenshaw?) was a solid step in the right direction.

IIRC they were in Warzone, a poorly equipped but high morale sort of unit.

Veldrain wrote:

Why would a fresh out of college accountant have the same power(stats? experience?) as a veteran special forces pulled off the front lines due to injury? This isn't d&d where your level stat is all that matters.

I dont know if you've ever played D&D but it's not the only thing that matters (the game has attributes, skills, feats, powers, and items as well) but rather that level is a generally accepted gauge of overall power. My point wasn't that the characters should be the same but that the difference between an accountant and veteran special forces (your example) might be too wide a gulf for STARTING characters in terms of power for my tastes. If you played it and liked then power to you. It seems like I can't have too unique a take on that if they changed that for the subsequent edition though.

I found this for ... laughs... and giggles.

Enjoy!

https://archive.org/details/warzonefastfurio0000king

 warboss wrote:

 Ronin_eX wrote:

It shows up a lot in life-path systems as a risk vs. reward limiter. In the Target editions of Mutant Chronicles, it only started to be a risk at age 45. Considering most characters start the career cycle at 16, this means you had ~14 career repetitions before you even started risking it. Most characters stopped well before then, so it generally only came up if you were too deep for your own good. Traveller had a similar method, though the risk was present all the time (as it was not simply aging that caused it).

So did that have an effective bump in power associated with it as well? From the description, it sounds almost like being able to start a character at a higher level than others who don't push their luck. I'm not an advocate for soviet character generation where all characters must be exactly equal in power but, if that is the case, I don't think I could get behind that either. Admittedly, I am a fan of point based stats and classless character generation though and not of early 70's-90's random mechanics in generation.

In 1st/2nd Edition, party balance could get pretty wild, though this was usually more an effect of starting wealth than straight skill. It was fairly easy to make a competent character in their field of expertise, but being able to afford the shiniest gear out of the gate was a big game changer.

The 3rd Edition normalized this quite a bit by limiting repetitions and allowing for more targeted pathing through the various stages. 2d20 characters tend to come out of chargen pretty competent and equipped with anything they need, so it is a lot harder to have a character that's too weak or too strong (though in the end, because of the random nature, there will be some variance between characters). But given the influence of system-mastery in point-based or class-based games, I don't ever feel like it's any worse than those, just different.

Luckily, Modiphius did a hell of a job giving the setting its proper swan song as they developed the RPG line for longer than Target ever did and released a fully realized iteration of the setting before giving the license up. It would be nice if it stuck around, but the line itself was fairly complete. If we never get another effort as good again for either the RPG or Warzone, then I can at least be happy with that. It would be nice to see Warzone get a proper send-off as well with modern minis line that did more than scratch the surface, but that is a bit of a bigger ask than a feature-complete RPG line.

Either way, a lot of us have fond memories of the setting and would love to see it done right after so many companies (including its progenitor) end up fumbling the ball with it. So far, RezNova hasn't given the best impression that they're the one, but they also haven't done any worse than the last few either. So we'll see (or we won't).

I'm glad to hear that they had such a good run with their version of the RPG. Did the timing of that coincide with the Prodos/Archon minis game?

Yup, they came out around the same time (Warzone was first though as I recall) and Prodos even did a few RPG minis for them. But where Modiphius uses Kickstarters to bootstrap a whole RPG line, Prodos's plan seemed far less concrete and they began flailing pretty soon after instead of focusing on their early success with Warzone and growing from there.

FWIW there was a post on Facebook saying Kick Starter in May.

Tangential to the topic at hand, but as someone who played Rifts on and off again for over a decade, I don't recall any situations where a character could die during creation.

Sure, you could roll up stats that were effectively worthless for the character you wanted to play, even after buffing up your physical stats with skills, but so few of the them were pertinent to survival for many Rifts characters that it was mostly fluff and whether or not you got a +1 or a +3 to a D20 roll, or an extra couple percentage points on skills.

Unless you made a Juicer (who typically had a lifespan measured in a handful of years at best) and decided they got Juiced a decade ago, nothing is really leaping out at me. Maybe some RCCs with exceptionally short lifespans? Attribute bonuses were common enough, actual penalties a bit less so, but it has been over a decade since I last played, so I'm not stating this in a definitive kind of way.

More just a surprised musing as I stumbled across the topic in the midst of the thread.

Since the Kickstarter is finally here I'm going to close this 3 year old thread and start a new one.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/809850.page#11527590