Short lists of character abilities

[whswhs]

@DrBob

Character improvement is for:

• Obtaining the skills the GM forgot to tell you were vital for this campaign plot theme (you didn’t take cricket)
• Obtaining the skills the GM forgot to tell you were vital for their playstyle (you took animal training, but instead he’s using Empathy to train puppies because these are Faerie Dogs) .
• Boosting the skills the GM told you about, but didn’t emphasis enough (you took cricket but didn’t put many points in it, so are very bad at it)
• Obtaining the skills the chargen system short-changed you on (you could only afford two out of three of cricket, martial arts and animal training)
• Boosting the skills the chargen system short-changed you on (you took cricket but couldn’t put many points in it, so are very bad at it)

I don’t think I see much of any of those in my current campaign. When I was starting it out, I dealt with the first three by giving all the players a few extra points (I think around 5) that they could spend later on “Oh, I didn’t think of taking that!” rather than through awarded character points.

But what my players have mainly spent their points on has been buying things the characters found out by doing things they hadn’t done before—in this case, travelling to unknown lands, trading with their people, and spending time with each other, since they were from four different species and five different cultures. In other words, this is fairly far away from an archetypal campaign. They were already people of fairly substantial competence at the start, but they were definitely going beyond their comfort zones.