So, this morning I had a game pretty much organised around me to play in a fantasy game with a couple of friends from America. The game is Zounds! and it utilises the SFX system created by +Joshua Macy and it is a freely available from RPGDriveThru.com. My friend, +Cameron Corniuk has been at me and at me about this game in his own sort of way and I downloaded it but did not really get a chance to have a look.
A few people were there (including +Joshua Macy ) and we started into character generation. We did not get any further than character generation because +Cameron Corniuk takes an individual approach to walking people through the generation system. And the generation system is great. I liken this experience to the time that I wandered into a FATE character generation session quite by accident.
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| Image taken from the RPGDrivethru website |
The system offers you templates that cover a very high level character concept e.g. adventurer, wise man etc. These are not character classes, they are high level concepts that set up the framework for the character to follow. The character will be built up from powers and schticks. Powers are things that you attack and defend with whilst schticks are things that you cannot attack or defend with, similar to skills and abilities. There are also boons that allow you to add to or modify your powers, schticks or statistics (there are a few statistics).
You would think that these powers and schticks were prescribed in the book for you to pick from like a menu. But the that is far from the truth. In fact you make up all of these things out of your own idea for a character. Take the character that I made, , Fast Dirk.
My concept coming into the game was that I wanted to play a sleazy, corruptible street thief who brokers in information. He was probably caught at some stage and is working as a stooge for possibly three or four different places. Trouble is he is good at what he does, and people cannot help but like him, unless of course they have just found out that he has betrayed them somehow. Or stolen from them, or sold them out. But given time they will deal with him again. After all he knows what is going on.
So this is what I came up with.