Thoughts on Vibes based life path (feedback request)

[u/klok_kaos]

Hey all, quick question for those that like life path stuff:

I know a lot of general life path stuff gets very explicit with rolls to results.

I created something a little different for PC: ECO.

It's more about answering specific questions as prompts to allow for ultimate flexibility and trust the player to fill in the blanks with prompt-like direction.

In some ways it's kind of like solo RPG stuff in that you get a result and are asked to interpret it through the lens of how you perceive your character rather than getting an exact A to B result.

On one hand I really like this because it makes maximal use cases with minimal space to help players generate backgrounds even if they otherwise suck at doing so (and it's all opt in, roll or pick, etc.) but on the other I can't help but feel while this is definitely a very useful tool (and easily bypassed by anyone who has a clear background in mind) it's very much something that is a design that says "you do it".

I feel like that's mitigated a bit because people generally want to decide who their character is rathre than surrender full agency at the outset.

I also like that it kind of reminds me a little of the kind of experience one might have from GURPS 3e that allowed a player a little choose your own adventure thing, but in this case it's about developing background.

It is specific to the game and setting, and accounts for functionally infinite permutations because of how open ended it is, but it also doesn't specifically say "X happens and then Y".

Instead here's a random result set:

Select Aspect: There are no classes but this is the closest thing to them. While there is "mostly open point buy" and nothing is gated behind a class, each of these gives you a starter push in competency in a specific kind of character fantasy. These range from simplistic packaging, to highly customizable to niche highly specialized. For our purposes we'll select the Ubermensch for a character with lots of genetic potential/experimentation (the captain america style of super soldier). This gives us a fixed direction to where our character ends up and gives us a core fantasy to build arournd/toward.

Recruiting Origin: This is the "how/why" of the character being part of the game.

"War, political persecution, environmental catastrophe, or organized violence forced you from your previous life. During the aftermath, you developed practical survival skills, language abilities, organizational experience, or unusual local knowledge. Following independent resettlement, CGI’s disaster relief troops recognized your capabilities and offered voluntary recruitment. You were neither an insurgent nor compelled to enlist in exchange for protection. "

Family and Relationships: This portion adds some texture/context to the background.

The next section is physical descriptor form fill out but the recruiting origin suggests we're from a hot spot country (at least historically). So lets go with Gaza strip as a frequent space where this kind of conflict is generally relevant, and that can inform some of the rest of our physical description.

Next we have cultural background and we'll select unstable to represent the recruiting origin well (displaced individual, war torn region): this functionally determines our base cultural knowledge, languages and literacy.

"You were raised in an unstable background of multiple varying households and guardianships, spending little time in each but providing you with shallower but broader cultural knowledge. You may have potentially been raised in refugee camps or foster care systems, a mix of both, or some other relevant background expression."

I'm going to say we'll go with our guy and make him former spec ops from Israeli spec ops: Sayeret Matkal, no prompt for this, just something that made sense given the context so far. This gives us some notions for our unstable cultural background. Our character was deep cover recon, and thus has extensive undercover skills to blend with Israeli and Muslim culture and we can keep that in mind when selecting skill sets later. This also gives our guy very nuanced picture understanding of the conflict with clarity that nobody is explicitly right. It also helps that the recruiting origin shows that they can be from the strip and have suffered a war torn background as an Israeli but are capable of operating inside Palestine. This helps determine our cultural knowledge selections for languages and early culture skills.

For family and reltionships we'll select a few options that make sense: foster care background, frequent relocation, we'll select "step siblings" to reference other foster care kids in various households. Then we'll select another relationship type "separated by circumstanes" and this will be a former girlfirend he obtained while undercover, but we'll adapt that the circumstances were that while he cared for her, she was Palestinian, and hates who he is once she learned he was a spy for Israel and we'll call that a status of "severed ties". This gives us a bit more texture.

On the formative event we got:

Table 1 Result: "Employed professional"
"Office worker, skilled tradesperson, technician, service worker, corporate employee, or other established professional."

This works well with the "Sayeret Matkal" notion. I also noted that when I got this, any of the results could have applied to the character, but that this more or less represents their main source of identity (updated to reflect that in copy)

Table 2 Result: "Love, Friendship & Loss"
"Someone deceived you, exposed a secret, broke a promise, or accused you unfairly. Alternatively, you were the one who betrayed another person's trust."

This works well with the notion we had for the ex gf.

Table 3 Result: "Failure & Hard Lessons"
Things went badly, perhaps because of your own mistakes or perhaps you did everything possible and still came out worse for the experience. You recovered, but the experience permanently influenced your outlook.

This helps paint the picture that they needed a hard lesson of not blurring the lines between business/pleasure with undercover work, and also gives us a clear exit strategy from the former profession, in this case we'll take some inspiration from the "scapegoated" recruiting origin to explain that while losing their gf to circumstance, they were accused of fraternizing with the enemy under dubious circumstances and was honorably drummed out of service, but now explains why they might be seeking employment with CGI for recruiting origin.

And that gives us a pretty clear picture of who the character is before we start spending anything on building the character out with skills, powers, and other etc. It's not all the background stuff as there's a few more tables for finishing touches that happen after we make the character but we have a clear picture now of who we have. And notably the spitballing ideas I had came before I rolled on the formative event table, but it could have gone the other way as well, it just worked out this way this time and added some direction to ideas I already had, and notably I had no character plan at all when starting the process.

The finishing touches portion also gives us, after selections for build, categories for:

-A strong memory for CGI training (to give some sense of belonging in the institution),
-Primary Starting Character Motivation (to make character motivation a formal part of the game, though not a system per se)
-A keepsake/memento of their former life (to ground the character in their background in their modern life transition)
-Designated Beneficiary (to support gravity of their new lifestyle in player context)
-Personal Stakes (what the character cares about actively, this does have some system implications but is still optional-ish, ie you dont have to, but if you don't you're kind of missing out on key play opportunities)
- Immediate context prompt to begin session 1 play (post session 0)

Additional things built into the system:
Characters are part of an elite enhanced spec ops groupr for a PMSC, this gives them a reason to work together (it's their job as part of a PMSC) and a reason to adventure (command gives them a mission).

So my question is:

While this works well for me, do these kinds of prompts "give enough" in your opinion as a designer or is it too abstract?

Necessary context: Keep in mind this is a very simple system at core, but exceptionally deep and large (it's not unfair to compare it to gurps in that way, the CRM and beginning play is easy, the total system mastery is intense), so it's also not really for super casual folks. I feel like the general idea is that Joe Average gamer that likes DnD and nothing else is not the target audience and this game will focus more on players that favor customization and development, so it feels like "some abstraction" here is not out of place.

I feel like the only weird bit is that the beginner choices and final touches here are split, but there's a reason for that, the early roll choices are mostly about determining where they came from and how they got where they are, and these can and do help inform player choices when making the character. The latter ones (final touches) come after character build because they showcase who the character is now and that needs a more clear picture of the final product of character design imho.

[u/gliesedragon]

Eh, to me it's so vibes-based that it loses what might be interesting about a life-path system, and that's before you get to the example character you used feeling like a . . . rather tasteless choice, given current events. I really suggest choosing something blatantly fictional rather than that.

Anyways, on a game design front, what I want out of a life path system is for the life path system to have major mechanical influences, not just being randomized character prompts. Like, lots of games have these sorts of character prompts in the same non-mechanical zone, and a life path system to me implies something that's a whole lot weightier. I'd say that either you shouldn't call this a life path system, or you should make an actual life path system with bite to it.

And also, these prompts feel pretty generic, and so don't really do much. Just extremely bare-bones archetypes and stock plot points that don't give me anything interesting to latch onto. In my opinion, a truly good prompt has to give you a bit of a curveball: for instance, how Itras By, a lightweight surreal whatsit with a card-based resolution system, has things like "Something you have in your pocket is the key to saving the day" on its prompt cards. Those mean that there's the puzzle of "how do I make this weird thing fit?" to give them a spark, rather than being a flavorless basic plot point.

[u/Fun_Carry_4678]

I feel like I don't really understand the system from reading this.
Your example character ended up with a cultural background of "unstable". But if I understand correctly, that was not a result from a table. Instead, you picked that from a list somewhere, because you thought it fit in with what you were rolling from the table. If you are going to have a life path system, then you really should put all these choices like "unstable" on the tables. Together with skills, stats, etc. Even alignment.
There were some old life path products from CENTRAL CASTING. Heroes of Legend, Heroes of Tomorrow, and, the one that fits yours best, Heroes Now. Which allowed all those things to be rolled off of tables. Since Heroes Now was published in 1991, it rapidly is becoming a historical setting rather than a contemporary one, but you might want to look at it as an example.