Cortex Plus Design Diary 02: Components of Character, Part 3

Upon looking at the list of different Trait types for all the Cortex Plus games I have noticed that a few patterns emerge.

First off you can find the Distinctions Trait in every game.  I think this is very telling of the quality and design of the Margaret Weis Productions games.  Distinctions are all about the character of your PC, and all of these games do a wonderful job of exuding and promoting character through mechanics.  It is one of my favourite things about them.

Next let's look at what else is common across all four games.  Though the name and details may change, there is always a type of Trait that deals with the skills and training of the character, as well as one that deals with the physical abilities, be they natural, preternatural, or supernatural.  Since the use of these type of abilities is the most logical way to take actions and just plain do things, this completely makes sense.

Relational Traits are the next most common, appearing in three of the four games.  The only one without them is Dragon Brigade, so technically they are in all of the published games.  They are more of the focus in some games, Smallville, than others, Marvel, but they are there.  I'm very happy to see them too.  I love mechanically codifying relationships and social connections in roleplaying games.  Yes, there is a good amount of debate about whether you should have this or that amount of social mechanics, and how you should "just roleplay it."  But I really think, if you put the weight and consistency of mechanics behind your social roleplay, as long as you stay in the mindset of putting fun and story first, you only help out the roleplay.

The last of the five categories of Traits I'm going to talk about are ones that deal with morals and values.  Two of the games, and only one of the published ones, have an explicit Trait type that deals with this topic.  But I think the subject is there in the others, it just isn't focused on as much.  Also, in Marvel and Leverage you are playing superheroes and Robin Hood types respectively.  So to a degree an amount of moral viewpoint is already pre-set by the very character types.

So as I move towards creating a system where one can customize Cortex Plus to whatever setting you want, I'll be looking at five distinct Trait categories:  Character, Relational, Skill, Physical, and Morality

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I love Cortex Plus.  The Traits system is just so wonderfully flexible and modular.  It strongly integrates great roleplay aspects, like unique character qualities and relationships, into the mechanics.  And at the end of the day, in all my experiences, it has been just a ton of plain old fun.

Next up is stripping the setting and fluff off of Smallville character creation and looking at its base framework, but that will wait till later in the week.  Next few days will have the start of a serial story and some game reviews.

Cortex Plus Design Diary 02: Components of Character, Part 2

As I said in my last post I have not actually played any of the other Cortex Plus games I'm about to talk about, so hopefully I won't draw things out by referring to mechanics like I did with the Marvel one.  Here we go:

Dragon Brigade

Dragon Brigade is a game about swashbuckling action, intrigue, and romance.  It seems to be high fantasy with some Victorian and Steampunk elements mixed it.  Lets see how the components of the character sheet help portray this theme.  They are Action Traits, Distinctions, Specialties, Talents, and Signature Assets.

Action Traits:  These are a list of five characteristics that make up each character.  They are Courage, Faith, Guile, Reason, and Vigor.  Each character will have various dice of different sizes assigned to each one; to show how much a given Action Trait is a part of a given character and his personality.  Using these descriptive words definitely helps drive home the feel and theme of the game in my opinion; and once again the beauty of Cortex Plus can be seen in that one can just pick the right set of words for the theme they want and plug them right in.  The fact that your actions are defined by using one or two of these words and their associated dice I think really also helps drive home the theme and RP with each move taken.  By rolling the dice associated with Courage and Faith you show to yourself and the whole table that you are acting out of these specific motivations.

Distinctions:  these work exactly like the ones in the Marvel RPG; giving you character specific RP and description cues that you use to either help or hurt yourself; whichever is most interesting in the fiction.

Specialties:  A bit more specific in this game than Marvel, but once again they fill the place of skills, giving you extra dice when you act in areas where you have knowledge and training.  Because they are broadly defined and very customizable they easily embody the feel of the setting and game.

Talents:  Talents strike me as being like Feats in D&D, and a little like SFX in Marvel.  They are basically special abilities that let you manipulate or change the rules for a given action to achieve things you might not normally have been able to.  They set you apart by giving you things others can't do, and give you the extra little heroic punch that makes a good PC.

Signature Assets:  To put it simply, these are gear.  Your special weapons and items, magic stuff, etc etc.  Fantasy games are usually all about gear, and steampunk loves its gadgets; so I think this trait definitely helps reinforce the feel of the game.

Smallville

Smallville is about high school teen drama plus superpowers!  Okay that might be a bit of a simplified description.  The book lists the themes of the show as things like "love and loss, friendship and betrayal, trying to find your place in a world that doesn't always seem to accept you".  So ya, what I said.

Anyway, the Traits in Smallville are grouped in three big categories, each with sub-categories:  Drives, Assets, Resources.

Drives:  Drives are broken up into two divisions, Relationships and Values.  Both of these are presented with a statement that helps define the particular nature of the Relationship or Value, and a die size that denotes its strength and importance to your character.  For example, Tess is playing with fire d8 or Truth I decide who knows it d10.  Whenever the Relationship of Value can apply to a given action you can use it in your roll; and by defining the nature of these Drives your able to define what type of situations you'll be able and suited to take action in.  Everybody will have Relationships, many of them with the same people; and everyone will have the same 6 Values.  But the die rating and the details phrase will distinguish one character from another.

Assets:  The three categories of Assets are Distinctions,Abilities, and Gear.  Distinctions are once again thematically the same, unique character and personality quirks that define you, though they do work mechanically differently here.  Abilities are the superpowers and special abilities in this game.  They are similar to Power Sets, they have a die rating that defines their strength as well as extra, unique applications that personalize them to each character and limits that illustrate flaws and the like.  Gear works just like abilities; except that all Gear shares the same limit in that it can be lost, stolen, or broken because it is a physical piece of...gear.

Resources:  These are either Extras or Locations; or important, helpful NPCs or special places that provide bonuses to those that control them, respectively.  These once again tie in to the theme really well; both by reinforcing the focus on relationships and by connecting in the physical world setting.

So as you can see a lot of the traits in Smallville deal with relationships and values, how you feel and connect with things.  Very much in keeping with the theme.

Leverage

Leverage is a game of super competent thieves, hackers, and con men using their skills to help take down bad guys; in a very Robin Hood-esque manner.  The Traits that define characters in this game are Attributes, Roles, and Distinctions.  (Which shows us that Distinctions are the common thread Trait in each game; which makes sense since they are so about the unique character)

Attributes:  These are things like Agility and Willpower.  They are the closest type of Trait to the old school D&D attributes.  While they aren't really adding much flavor or theme to a given character, they are definitely going to be easy to understand and comprehend.  Also, they fit the theme of the overall game iself, which is about doing bad-ass things with your bad-ass capabilities.

Roles:  There are five roles in Leverage:  Grifter, Hacker, Hitter, Mastermind, and Thief.  They obviously fit very thematically into the feel of the game; all those heist shows and movies always have a collection of skilled specialists who are the best at what they do.  Each character will have a Primary Role that they are really good at, and a Secondary Role that they are cross-trained in.  Each Role will also have Talents and Specialities; which once again are specific special abilities or skill sets that relate to the overall category and help make your character unique.

Distinctions:  Just like in all the other games these are flavor text and descriptive phrases that help define your character and can both help and hinder your character depending on the fiction and the circumstances.

So that is that as far as defining the various Traits that make up a given Cortex Plus character.  As you can see there is a decent amount of similarity to the Traits from each game, and next time I'll look at some of the patterns that I see there.  I'll also kinda sum up my feelings on the whole subject in general before moving on to setting out the framework for a general character creation.

Design Diary 02:  Components of Character, Part 3

Cortex Plus Design Diary 01: Looking Under The Hood (Character Creation)

One of the regular weekly posts that I intend to start making is going to be a RPG Design Diary. The intent is to look at various RPGs, analyze them, talk about my own RPG projects, and the like. Hopefully I'll create a least a couple of different completed projects out of all this, as well as providing insight into various game systems from my point of view.

The first topic I'm going to tackle is analyzing Cortex Plus, by Margaret Weis Productions, in an attempt to both better understand it myself and to help move myself towards a place where I can hack together a, for lack of a better term, “setting-less” version of the game that I can adapt to use in various different games in the future, in all sorts of settings.

I'm going to look at all the current applications of the Cortex Plus system that exist: Smallville, Leverage, Marvel, and the Dragon Brigade Quick start. Fair warning, the Dragon Brigade one is a short one short quick start product, so there isn't much meat to work with there. Also, I have not played either Smallville or Leverage; so my knowledge of them will be purely book knowledge, not applied knowledge.

The above links are mostly to RPGGeek.com pages for the games, because the current MWP website doesn't have much content on it, and what is there is basically for Marvel.  About the only content on the site for other games are the forums and a downloads page.

I'm going to start off at the place that most people start when they are looking at a RPG: Character Creation. Let's take a look at how each system handles creating characters, and then I might talk about what I want character creation in my version to look like.

Dragon Brigade – The quick start uses pre-made characters. Nothing really to say there about the process of creating characters. The actual Dragon Brigade game is not out yet; just the one PDF(which you can get ahold of here). I'll analyze the various traits and things that make up the character sheets in each game in a later post; so I'll have more to say then.

Marvel – This one does not really have any sort of organized or codified character creation system in the book. Margaret Weis Productions basically provides you with all the various pieces of characters in the GM section of the book. They basically say, decide in your mind what you think a character and his power level would be like, then assign dice and powers to fit that, and just don't be a jackass about min-maxing.  Oh and MWP's download page has a PDF of a random character generator if you want to just roll random dice to make your hero.

Leverage – To create your Crew member in Leverage you are basically picking various items from lists or groups and assigning them at each of seven distinct steps. The first thing you do is detail your Background. This is open ended, you basically write down various bits of info about your past, personality, experience, and the like. Then you pick your Primary and Secondary roles from the list of crew member types; and assign a d10 and a d8 to them respectively.

Next you take a pool of die types to each of your Attributes, which are things like Agility, Strength, and Willpower. After that you come up with a Distinction, which is a short phrase that describes your character. Then you play through and introductory session called the Recruitment Job. In this you end up assigning the rest of the character traits, like Specialties, which are kinda like extra bonuses in focused skill areas and Talents, which are kinda like powers/feats.

There is also an option for skipping the Recruitment Job and just assigning all that as well. I do like the idea of the Recruitment Job, it plays in to another RPG concept that I'm working on. This also really feels as close to old school RPGs as any of the Cortex Plus games; in that you do a step by step process and pick from lists and the like.

Smallville – I'm just going to go ahead and say that this is one of my favorite character creation systems.....EVER! It is really cool, tons of fun, and makes great, interconnected characters. The system is dubbed Pathways. You use a big sheet of butcher paper, or a white board, or a battle mat or something like that and end up drawing out this big diagram that shows how the PCs, NPCs, locations, etc. are all connected. It is a lot of fun to do and makes a very useful tool both for characters to connect to each other and the GM to build future plots.

You start off by making a few decisions. Where is your setting, at least initially for the character creation? What time period are you in? How far along the Pathways are you going to go when making characters? The last one is a kinda Rookies vs. Veterans feel determiner for the game.

You then consult a chart that is basically a 5x5 table (or 5x9 if you go all the way to the Identity lifepath stage by going for more of the Veteran feel). Each row represents a different stage of development that you characters (called Lead in Smallville) goes through. The first five that you will always go through are Origin, Youth, Focus, Road, Life Changing Event. The remaining four that are optional at this point are Priority, Modus Operandi, Motivation, and Identity. The columns represent different groupings of backgrounds, priorities, and social stratum that your character will be in and move through. For instance the options on Origin are Rich, Ordinary, Gifted, Strange, Alien.

Moving through the Pathways chart is a fairly easy to understand method. You go down one row and can choose to slide left or right one column if you desire to do so. This has both positives and negatives in my opinion. The positives are that you have easy guidelines to follow, your choices will fit thematically together fairly well, and you won't be jumping into something that will give you random bonuses that you don't need. But it can also come across as limiting; where you literally may find it impossible to choose 2 or 3 of the options at the next step below you. (Side note: The book does say that you can jump to any column if your group decides that's how they want to do things; but they suggest doing it the normal way)

Looking ahead to wherever you have determined your stopping point to be and planning backwards before you build forwards can definitely be a big help if there is a specific goal you are shooting for. Also, the names of the different stages you will pick are usually quite descriptive; but not all encompassing. Sure according to the chart you can't go from Rich to Outsider mechanically; but that doesn't mean you can't work those themes into your roleplay.

At each of these stages you will also be doing two things. One is drawing and making connections on the Pathway Map, which was that big diagram you draw on the butcher paper. The second is adding and increasing mechanical stats and abilities on your character sheet. An example of adding to the Pathway Map is that at the Origin step everyone draws a square and puts their Lead's name in it. Then all the squares are connected to all the other squares with arrowed lines. Then each player connects their Lead square to a new Circle with a line; the Circle represents an NPC. You'll keep doing this at each step; adding in new NPCs, Locations, and Assets; connecting them all to each other, and defining the nature of the connecting relationships.

You also increase the various traits on your character sheet at each step. For instance the Geek lifepath step lets you add in a new Distinction, step up a Distinction, and step up a Relationships, Asset, or Resource. Stepping up means raising the die type associated with it, i.e. from a d4 to a d6. Don't worry that you don't know what any of these different types of traits and things in game terms means, I'll be analyzing what is on each of the character sheets for each game next; and then going into talking about my ideas for a setting-less character creation system that uses the best of all of them.

Till next time, thanks for reading and happy gaming.

Design Diary 02:  Components of Character, Part 1