Lifepaths: Great RPG Mechanics

#RPGMechanics Week Three

Ever since the first player asked if they could assign their rolls to stats rather than rolling them in order, there has been a tension between random and assigned character creation. Superhero 2044 is arguably the first “points” system, distributing values into pools, but the rules ended up so vague as to make that irrelevant. Instead Champions is the grandaddy of point-buy games and still among the crunchiest. 

But Traveller, one of the earliest games, made an innovation that only a small number of games have followed: Lifepaths. In the case of Traveller, Career Paths which notoriously could kill or cripple your character. There character creation became a game of push-your-luck. While their were some descriptions, much of what this Lifepath generated was mechanical (stats, skills, gear). FASA’s Star Trek (1983) would take a similar approach, with a little more narrative elements added in (especially for the Klingon version). 

But it would be Cyberpunk 2020 which would really delve into Lifepaths as a way of seriously defining character backstory. The Listen Up You Primitive Screwheads supplement offers a multistep flowchart and we’d see a similar approach with Cybergeneration. You would build a random family history, painful life events, loves, and more. But then Lifepath approaches would fade more to the background until Modiphius seriously picked them up for some of their games. 

Lifepaths have to straddle the line between offering imaginative selections, freedom of choice, and mechanical impact. You want cool things to happen– but with enough room for the player to shape the narrative. Mechanical benefits (like stats) have to be significant but also balanced so characters don’t end up with a single boosted area with a deficit in others. You also have to make sure that the jumble of elements created actually gels. If you have too many drastic incidents, it may be difficult for a player with connect them into a story they dig. 

Star Trek Adventures’ Life Path feels right to me. It has a balance of choices and surprises. It has a relatively small number of steps, you have input and selection throughout, and at the end you have some fixing and adjusting you can do. Some other Modiphius 2d20 games use lifepaths, but with some costs and restraints about choices. 

The Star Trek Lifepath breaks down as follows. First you select your species which gives you a trait, some attributes, and access to species talent. Second is our first roll: Environment, the kind of world you grew up on. It’s a short list of six, each one offering stat benefits and a personal value. Third is another short list roll, Upbringing (Stafleet, Business and Trade, etc.) showing what kind of family or society raised you. The neat thing here is you get to choose if you accepted or rebelled against that upbringing, each giving different character advances. 

After that we finally get to Starfleet Academy where you can choose or roll which of the three tracks you went through. From there you choose your time in your career (young, experienced, or veteran officer). Then you roll a d20 twice for Career events (Transporter Accident, Called Out a Superior, Discovers an Artifact, etc.). Each gives benefits and has some questions you get to answer to flesh out your story. After that there’s some finishing touches, including discretionary stat spends. 

I like this approach for a couple of reasons. First, it doesn’t wear out its welcome. If you’re doing character creation in a Session Zero, walking through this process with everyone at the table doesn’t feel like a chore. You have the same number of steps for everyone, you get to hear what others have chosen, and you get input and support for your own choices. Second, it has a great deal of flexibility, you have sufficient choices along the way– but the die rolls can still surprise you. Third, it is firmly set into the universe and genre. Everything here says Star Trek and reinforces the feel of that setting. 

One of the challenges of Lifepaths is finding the interesting through lines– what kinds of choices impact and how does that shape the genre. The other is finding the limits. For example I love Dune, for example, and I’ve thought about how you might do a Lifepath approach to that. But I think the possibilities might be a little too open. To encompass the Dune universe you’d either need to be very generic or you’d need lots of options, steps, and paths. The recent version of Runequest takes an approach which modifies lifepaths to keep them tightly on track with the setting.

But I keep thinking about them– and especially how they could interact with systems with lighter mechanical elements (PbtA, Fate, Forged in the Dark).