The retconned lifepath

I want to develop an idea about a novel RPG progression mechanic which was pitched here:

https://www.tumblr.com/alexanderwales/771838390587047936/pitchposting-retcon

The main idea is this: it's a narrative game where the majority of the gameplay involves placing the pieces of your own past.
[...]
So the whole game would be this: slowly adding to your own backstory, penning yourself in over time, until there's no room to maneuver anymore, and shortly thereafter, the game ends. The fundamental tension of the game is that you want to keep the character as amorphous as possible, to commit to as few details as possible, but commitment is necessary to actually accomplish things.
[...]
in this game "progression" does not come from increasing skills because you got better, it comes from defining the past.

I view this as an interesting twist on lifepaths.

 

Refresher: Lifepath mechanics

In TTRPG gaming, characters are classically generated by picking character elements (or clusters of them) from a set of options, supplemented with dice rolls to instantiate numerical attributes. Most games still do something in this vein.

A lifepath character generation system switches this up. Now you make early life decisions as your character, and/or roll to see what happened to them before gameplay began, and the outcome of that process is your character's start state.

(Aside: I made a comprehensive lifepath character generation book for D&D 5e which you can check out here: https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/438774/Steps-to-a-Hero)

Lifepaths are an attractive alternative because they (can) restrict a player's decisions to only those of their character, not a bunch of things that their character was never in a position to choose themselves like their 'intelligence' stat. As a result,

• They add more gameplay to the game
• They feel more real
• They reduce the pressure on the player to be creative
• They replace the part of a role-playing game that has little to no role-playing (character generation) with a version that is mostly role-playing

Refresher: Retcon mechanics

Retcon is retroactive continuity. It's a broad category of ideas, and 'deciding parts of the past which were left undecided' is just one very narrow part.

The main RPG retcon mechanic I'm familiar with is the one Alexander Wales mentions in his pitch. Blades In The Dark, the GLOG, etc, permit a character by 'careful preparation' to retcon in things they have available to them, e.g., by carrying a bundle of unspecified equipment.

Outside of RPGs, something like this is a common part of story-telling games, where there are mechanisms for a player (as opposed to game master) to determine or replace parts of the world, often to the benefit of a character favoured or controlled by that player.

 

A possible synthesis

So we have this idea for, essentially, building a character by determining underdetermined bits of a lifepath.

➡️ Let's say characters all start at age 25, having had formative experiences since the age of 15, and initially have just one or two of their traits determined.

➡️ There's experience points, and you 'spend' xp at any time to declare how you 'spent' one year of your life (a nice little verbal correspondence).

➡️ Each year of your life grants you an appropriate character trait: an ability, skill, power, whatever.

➡️ Each trait you 'gain' in this way is, of course, one you've always had within the continuity of the game world. You're just revealing it now.

So you decide you spent a year traipsing the desert trade routes, and get increased endurance. Or you were pressed into military service as an archer, and are capable with a war bow. Or you spent a year repairing fishing trawlers, and have basic sailing and carpentry skills.

This setup allows for ten "level-ups", one for each adult / young adult year of your life prior to starting the game proper. You could tweak the time periods to get more buffer. If you do bump into the end game having 'spent' all your undetermined years, the game master would need to contrive a year-long time skip between adventures for the player characters to keep progressing, or switch to a different progression system.

Other than managing time, I see two main open problems. They're shared by most retcon / story-influencing mechanics:

1. Things in the game world can / should be able to interact with your character's history before you're "ready" to determine it. When this happens, the choices are: do the character advancement early, contrive a way out of revealing (deciding) it, or suffer contradiction later on.
2. When you do determine part of your character's history, it may make previous in-character choices and outcomes seem very stupid indeed. "You're telling me you apprenticed as an acrobat for a year? So have you been deliberately clumsy these last few weeks?"

 

Closing thoughts

By its nature, I think as a class of game mechanic this idea leans a bit towards the story-telling game end of the spectrum. It doesn't have many of the advantages of lifepaths which I mentioned.

It's a way for players to influence the overall narrative or game world more than their character's decisions. So I think if you were to develop it further, you'd be better off implementing it in a story-telling game or hybrid game rather than a 'strict' TTRPG.

Steps to a Hero (end of the campaign)

Do you want fantasy characters who have deep ties to their world? Backstory that directly affects mechanical traits? A fun, fast, unique character creation minigame?

We're down to the last 24 hours of the Kickstarter campaign for Steps To A Hero. It's the 125+ page book implementing a lifepath character generation system designed for compatibility with D&D 5e!

Thanks to everyone who's already supported the project!

What's a lifepath?

A lifepath is a unique tool for producing a roleplaying game character, beginning them early in life and setting them down a path to become the person that the player will begin the game with. It tells a story about how a character came about, replacing the common process of generating race, background, ability scores, and other traits.

A lifepath is a process of discovery, and each step on the path is an event, decision, or encounter which will reveal things about your character – generating both backstory and game-mechanical traits as you go. Everything in the book is streamlined for 5e, overriding or complementing parts of the base game.

What's in the book?

In Steps to a Hero, you’ll find

• Everything you need to develop characters with lifepaths for fifth-edition fantasy roleplaying
• 300 unique lifepath 'steps', each one combining a piece of weird/medieval fantasy short fiction and corresponding character traits
• A comprehensive set of rules describing the lifepath process, plus optional rules for tweaking character generation
• A ton of 5e game content including hundreds of new background features, and methods to make many millions of possible stories and backgrounds
• Support for 12 ancestries, including all the classics, plus half-djinni, half-minotaur, half-dryad, and shorewalker

Discover the remarkable story of each character’s early life, and determine how those experiences gave them the unique abilities and traits in their background.

 

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Venture forth!

Jade Perida: A 5e character made using lifepath generation

The Kickstarter campaign for my new book is three days in and has reached its funding goal. Today I'm sharing a 5e fantasy character created with the Steps to a Hero system.

The book has several ways to randomly generate character ancestries. For this one I used the balanced method, which has a small bias towards human ancestry. In today’s case, nine dice rolls gave us djinni and elf ancestry, and the story of someone's life.

Jade is not a physically brawny character, but a mental powerhouse. The uncovered story of her life is a driven and noble one. She set off at age 28 (young, for someone with elven blood) on a three-year journey.

Jade has one lifepath step from each ancestry, and another four steps that are events in her life. Jade is a bit of an outlier in that she didn't learn to use any tools over the course of her lifepath, but she ended up with plenty on her character sheet: lots of languages, skills, weapon proficiencies, starting equipment, and background features.

Steps to a Hero includes an optional rule for selecting a class based on the character's lifepath. In return for this constraint, a character can transfer a point from as many as five ability scores into one of their choice (to a cap of 19). We applied this rule and found that Jade is torn between Paladin, Wizard, and Cleric. Given her modest physical attributes and the righteous path in her background, Cleric is the obvious choice! The final step was to transfer a point from Intelligence to raise her Wisdom to 19.

You can follow along with the campaign to get more updates like this one.

Now on Kickstarter: A lifepath system for fifth edition fantasy!

Do you want characters to have deep ties to their world? Backstory that directly affects their mechanical traits?

We're crowdfunding the creation of a book that lets you create incredible characters using a uniquely tailored lifepath generation system. Click through to check out the project:

Lifepaths tell the story of a character’s early life, and let you discover how those experiences gave them the unique abilities and traits they start the game with. A lifepath is a process of discovery, and each step on the path is an event, decision, or encounter which will reveal things about your character.
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We're writing Steps to a Hero, a 127-page book that will be available digitally or as a physical volume via print-on-demand. It contains tons of new game content, including 300 unique “steps” affecting a character’s ancestry, actions, and fortune, a lifepath system for combining those steps into millions of possible backgrounds, new background features, new ancestries, and more.

Back the book on Kickstarter to get a reduced price as thanks for your support in bringing the project to life!

Let's make character creation a journey of discovery!

Tarb, the Strife-heeled: Half minotaur, half orc, all brawn

Tarb is a Fifth Edition character built with my upcoming lifepath system.

Tarb is a distinctive fellow! Half minotaur and half orc, with the physical ability scores you would expect from those ancestries, he set off at age 18 and spent 11 years questing, standing guard, and sailing. Tarb’s lifepath is made up of three heritage steps (from his minotaur and orc ancestries) and three endeavour steps (from events in his early life).

This particular character ended up with lots of proficiencies and background features, but no tool proficiencies. A finalisation stage pruned back a few more features I rolled for him, and permits him to start with extra hit points instead. He knows two languages, and doesn’t start with much equipment. These traits are all the result of how his lifepath turned out.

By using an optional rule in Steps to a Hero, we can select a class for Tarb based on his lifepath using a points-based system. The class we end up with is Fighter! To build a powerful warrior, this rule also empowered us to transfer a point each from Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma to raise his Strength from 15 to 18.

If you want to be alerted when my Kickstarter begins, click through the banner below!