We just completed our character generation session, though we were a little short with Dad out sick. Here’s the skinny on the characters to date. [The dice were cold; Kev wound up having to generate 4 sets of stats to finally wind up with one decent set.]
Kev created Dr. Emerson Brown, a wealthy son of a doctor and landlord in New York City. He had a great upbringing, but wants to escape dad’s shadow. He just turned 21, and is headed out west with a few guns and a medical kit. He’s known for his doctoring and has a few other white collar skills. He’s impulsive, short tempered, and has high standards. He has bedside manner, and comes off completely dismissive. He could be interesting to be around.
Mike used his last character, a kid of 15, and just finished up allocating the new building points (for reputation) and buying more gear tonight. He has outdoors and riding skills, and is headed out west to start up a ranch, capture some wild mustangs, and turn a tidy profit. He’s terrible at lying.
I created a boy from rural Tennessee, Bob Cassidy, now 19. He’s got a lot of natural talent [high wisdom], good cooking/fishing/observation type skills, a lot of experience handling a wagon, and some good gossip and talking skills. He won’t say no to food, and can’t lie to save his life. If you hear rustling at midnight, it’s probably just Bob looking for a snack.
We’re going to start at noon on Saturday. We’ll start off in St. Louis and join a wagon train, supply up, and start off for the territories to homestead a town, or build up a struggling town with a lot of new talent.
Late last night, I was thinking about aides that would have streamlined character generation a little more. The core realization is based off of something Fred Hicks wrote about 4e; that the character sheet you use in play is a lot simpler than the character worksheet you use to derive those numbers. I used that insight to create an Aces and Eights character worksheet. It guides you through the process from stat rolls to finishing up skill points and buying gear.
Here’s my character, Bob Cassidy. Without all of the math in between, and by separating the combat and non-combat parts of the character, I think it’s pretty easy to get a feel for him.
Speaking of math, here’s a simple spreadsheet for spending.
Finally, the real easiest way to do it: use the character generator. It does the math for you, and will roll or allow you to input your rolls. If I hadn’t already done things several times, this would be the way I’d enter it all– for the math check if nothing else!