Hello all, I return with a gang of fresh faces to take on the Hexcrawl!
While some might find the act of rolling up 50 PCs tedious and mind numbingly boring, I think we may be forgetting just how easy it can be to roll a character up using BX/OSE rules. Personally, I use the OSE fantasy and advanced fantasy rules so that I can get a full spread of PC choices and variety, although I tried to maintain a fair bit of balance among the basic classes and the nifty specialized ones.
The Method
Although I may have gotten nicer numbers if I rolled 4d6 and dropped the lowest value, I felt that this would be at odds with the project of #Hexplore24. I want to experience the mundane and average characters surviving in this unforgiving and potentially unrewarding world in a way that I don’t set one side up for success or failure. Sure, it would be nice to send Butch Hammercrunch the barbarian in with 18 strength to crush his foes easily, but, I’d rather see victories won
through the sheer will and luck of dice rolls. Sounds kind of crazy considering these characters are just 6 stats so far.
I did my best to not edit or reroll any numbers during the process, and only on one occasion did I need to go back and edit anyone. The character in question had no stats rolled above a 6, so I figured I’d put them out of their misery before things got started. Beyond that, I kept all those destined-to-lose characters and I wish them well.
For name generation I used the tried and true method of grabbing the first sound that comes to mind and then muttering prefixes or suffixes of names until it sounds name-ish, then I ask my partner if it sounds stupid, then I jot it down. As a personal philosophy, I don’t like to use real life names like Joseph or Michael, but sometimes I take these names and alter them a little to get fantasy names like Josen or Mitael. As a last note on names, I also believe that a lot of names sound silly at first (Bilbo or Frodo, anyone?) and as we are exposed to them and see the name take on honorable meaning through the character’s action, we say the name instead with respect.
The Product
The Madness
As you can see, from 300 dice rolls of 3d6, we have an average of 10.9, which is pretty much spot on. A lot of the characters have forgettable stat arrays, which is fine by me, but some have some very promising numbers. I avoided using the underdark based races, at least for now, as I don’t feel like the current game makes much sense to have Svirfneblin, Duergar, and Drow running around on the surface.
Now comes the more interesting nuance, and this is something I may do next in order to add some spice to this game world and gameplay: rolling for alignment. Perhaps this is some claim that is more profound than I think it is, but I think that the distribution of alignments for the average adventurer in this setting would be 50% Good, 40% Neutral, and 10% Evil. Of these, I’d break the Chaotic/Law axis evenly across each, so 33.3% of the Good are Lawfully Good, etc. I recognize this is also a bit tedious, but, I think the narrative that will arise from this will be extraordinary.
If I have a group of characters preparing to leave the starting settlement and they have a 6 member party with one of those members being a Chaotic Evil assassin, things might get juicy and dramatic when we find a hoard of treasure and somebody with a poisoned dagger doesn’t feel like sharing.
In the same respect, if a group of evil characters band together and head out into the wilderness, finding a lair all to themselves, we might have some villains organically arise and attract evil followers. Perhaps we even get some inter party conflicts when we find two or three rival parties not just fighting the wild beasts of this land, but also dealing with philosophically opposing PCs hellbent on taking the hard earned wealth of the good peoples of the land. Sound intriguing yet?
1-5: Good
6-9: Neutral
10: Evil
And
1-2: Lawful
3-4: Neutral
5-6: Chaotic
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