More Work on The Necklace

I began work on sketching out the chargen for The Necklace. As this is a game with a setting linked to the StarCluster 3 universe, as well as using the same game system, I had several choices of how to present the chargen process. The StarCluster 3 system is extremely modular. Everything except for the character stat ranges are plug-in modules. Lately, I have been using something I call layered template trees for CharGen - a character gets a number of points to purchase templates with depending on age, then spends them to buy templates laid out in trees, first purchasing the base template, then buying templates further uo the tree, or shifting to another tree root template. StarCluster 3 - the game, not the system - used a different format for CharGen , where the player builds a character up year by year buy taking Skills and Edges from their character's current profession, and changing professions where desired.

Both have their good and bad points - the layered templates produce a very integrated character, with rank inherent in the template, but suffering from the possibility of characters looking much more alike than is perhaps desirable; while the SC3 method takes longer and is somewhat more erratic, but the chances of any two characters coming out anything alike are virtually nil.

I went with the SC3 format, mainly because this game should be usable as a drop-in setting for any SC3 character to play in. Klax and I took the list of professions from SC3, and first pruned it of anything that would not be important in The Necklace, then added in new stuff peculiar to the setting. For example, in the Necklace, Shields - reflective shaped plasma fields and defense lasers - are not very viable, so they are dropped, along whit anything too military; While we added Xeno-Archaeologist for those who study the ruins of the Builders.

Then Klax and I took a look at how these professions would fly with the various playable cultures/species in the Necklace, and marked them appropriately, so a profession marked A, R, C would be suitable for Altiplanian, Rasi, and Carnivales characters. This is not meant to be a block, but a guideline. A player character can have any profession the player wants, but you won't find NPCs of non-indicated cultures in that profession.