Classes

In my original design, I had no classes-just skills. I have always preferred skill systems to classes. It made each character unique based upon the vision of the individual player. I found a few problems though. First, new players with no RPG experience found it difficult no matter how narrow or generic I made the skill lists. The constant refrain was, "let me read about it." Meaning they wanted to read nearly every skill description. I narrowed the skills down to 25, each with 2 sentences of text and it did not help. Average character creation took nearly an hour for a newbie as they wanted to read...and re-read...every option. Even when they only started with 3 skills to choose, still only nicked at best 20 minutes off the initial character creation.

Worse, they would pick some skills, start playing and then hit a wall if they came up against an odd challenge. Instantly the game halted as each consulted their sheet looking for a skill to use. If they did not see a skill they thought would apply, they just sat there. "Now what, I don't have a stop the guillotine blade trap skill." By trying to make each character different through skills, I simultaneously limited what each player believed their character could do. If it is not on the page, I can't do it.

So I flushed 7 months of writing and work. Well most of it anyway. Instead I switched to a class system. Each class name has an instant iconic pigeonhole ( I hope) which will give players imaginations a hook. I broke down 21 classes into 3 major families :Warriors, Rogues, Mystics. Each family has 7 classes within it. Damn 21 classes? Yup, but if your concept of defining a class is a full page description of special abilities and such, well no luck. I think most folks can figure out in the space of a short paragraph if they want to be a knight, a barbarian or an archer.

Now character creation is 20-30 minutes max. Pick a race, roll your stats, pick a class and off you go...

...@...