Character creaton was designed to be as simple as possible. Broadly experienced role players may note the obvious theivery from White Wolf and Chaosium systems. Any one with a bit of grounding in the western occult should recognize the pilfering from Crowley and Sarah the Jewess's alchemy. This should come as little surprise to anyone who knows me. As all characters are employed in a technical capacity by a research concern, this yeilds the ability to stereotype the character system to serve well for only one broad type of character. This system will not serve well for a d&d style game where there are a great number of character classes. It's a little easier to develop a system that only needs to deanthropormate human geeks, no?
Character's are defined broadly by their physical, social, mental, and soulful components. Each of these catagories contains the descriptors as follows;
Ratings in each catagory run from -5 to 5. You begin at 0 in each. (except intelligence, which starts at 2, due to the nature of the characters being developed.) Each attribute is bell curved around 0 with a standard deviation of 1. This means that the curves closely mimic IQ (I'll have a graph for you soon). You may rasie or lower any attribute by integral standard deviations. The cost to raise an attribute is the same as the "payment" received for lowering one. It is 5 times the final standard deviation. So, to get an appearance of 3 (exceptionally good looking, but not breathtakingly so) costs 15 points. Lowering ones Strength to -1 will get you 5 points. For intelligence, you may not lower your score (at least, you'll have to talk to me to do it) and raising it is as above, so to go to 4 intel will cost you 20 points. You have 50 points to spend, plus whatever you gain from lowering things. this should have the effect of making you overall above average, but not spectacular. Please ask me is you want to move more than 4 standard deviations in anything. (that is, if you want a score outside of (-4,4).) To compare scores to IQ (as a n idea of a bell curved attribute), multiply the score by 15 and add 100. So, an intelligence of 2 is an IQ of 130.
These ratings influence how you interact with others in straight contests of attribute. So, if Mary and Todd are seeing who can bench press more, or who scores higher on an IQ test, they simply compare scores.
In addition to one's attributes, one is defined by learned skills. These are rated on a scale of 1-99%. this is the Call of Cthulhu ability system, if you are familair with it. If not, it is very simple. The rating is your percent liklihood to preform a "normal" difficulty task in the particular field. Place 1000 points in ablities.
Things I expect everyone to be able to do need not be rolled for. Here is an example of a role: Mary wants to hit a target with a bow and arrow. It is 150 feet away, and the conditions are normal. Her archery skill is 43% (Mary was a girl scout). She acquires a random number from 0 to 100 (palmtop, dice, LOTS of quarters, etc...) and if she gets 42 or less, she hits. Else, she misses. Modifiers may be added or subtracted to reflect difficulty. Example: Penny wants to crack a code. She has 3 hours, and conditions are favorable (she has the necessary equipment, say). There is a modifier of +50 to crypto or +70 to math or +70 to computer. This means 50 or 70 will be added to Penny's role. It follows that unless Mary has at least a 51 in crypto, or a 71 in math or computers, there is no need to role. One more example: Tim wants to pick a lock. He has a 76 in "hoodlum-ry" Picking normal locks is not hard, there is a modifier or -25. Since he cannot role higher than 100, there is no need to role, he suceeds. Normally, I will not make you role for things you are unlikely to fail at unless it is dramatic to do so)
The list of abilities is here. I have clarified the ones I felt were unclear. Let me know if further explanantion is needed. They are loosley catagorized, but in no partuclar order. Let me know if there are things I forgot.
Most actions in the real world, however, require a combination of both attribute and ability facilities. An example; Morty wants to work a crossword puzzle. This is a combination of intelligence and "puzzle-solving". He has an intel of 2 and a "puzzle-solving" of 40%. It is a normal difficulty cross-word. He rolls a 52. Not quite high enough for the average person. But, Morty is quite bright. That shoudl count for somethign. He may subtract 5 to his roll for every standard deviation above normal he is. That is, he can add 2*5=10 to his role. He just made it. The general way this works is as follows: for a "complex" task (which should be most of them) both an attribute and an ability will be specified. Select a number form (0,100) subtract 5*(attribute score). If this number is below your abilty score, you suceed. Else you fail.
This may seem like a lot of numbers. It is. Quite sorry. However, they should rarely come up. It should be unneccessary to roll more than twice an hour. Every time you pick up dice it means I've failed as a game-master. Tonight or tomorrow, I will write a little perl script to automate character creation.