The General Goodness Point System

For the players

It goes something like this:

Decide what sort of character you want to play. This is a general classification. Like "James Bond", "nun", "The Greatest Snooker Player The Universe Has Ever Known" or something like that.
Ask you GM if that sort of character is OK. Like, she might not want James Bond running around in Tang dynasty China. If she says "No way!", chose again, ask again. Repeat until she agrees.
Now you have a character who's passably good at everything the GM feels comes with that sort of character. James Bond will be quite good at picking up girls, for example. But you want more than that, don't you?
In order to become good at something, give it points.
You don't think that's enough of an explanation? Ok, then... "something" is quite literally "something". Imagine something you'd like your character to be really good at. "Debugging Perl scripts", for example. Or "playing the first four bars of Beethovens Ninth Somphony on a bagpipe". Or "everything". Then place points at it. The more points, the better you'll be. The narrower the subject, the better you'll be, too.
Points are relative. If you only want to be good at one thing, it doesn't matter how many points you give it. If you're equally good at two things, giving them 1 point each or 4711 points each is worth the same in play.
Usually, 100 points is a nice, round number. If everyone uses a total of 100 points, it will be easier for your GM to compare how good different characters are at similar things (for some obscure reason many players chose to be good at "fighting").
The GM decides exactly how good you are. Live with it.
If you wish, you may declare something to be potential. That means that aren't very good at the moment, but you will become good at it Real Quick once you try it.
That's it. Really. Now all you have to do is to make up a name, a background, relatives, belongings, interests, personality and all that other minor stuff.

As an example of how a character may look in this system, let's have a look at my character in Gunnar's campaign. His name is Björn, and he's a smith's apprentice in a small village way off in the woods. A smith ought to be strong, and I want him very strong. So, 50 points at "Being strong". I want him to be big, but not too big. 5 points for "Being big". He ought to be able to hold his own in a barroom brawl, 5 points for "Brawling". He's a smith (or, at least a smith's apprentice), so he already can do some smithing, but I want him to be real good at it. 20 points for "Smithing". Lastly, I happen to know that he'll be sent on A Quest once the campaign starts, and on quests fighting skills frequently come in handy. But Björn can't reasonably have learnt any fighting in his village, so I put 20 points into "Potential fighting with a weapon to be determined later". Which wraps up the numberwrangling bit. Now I just have to decide on his personality and all that other stuff that brings the character to life.

For the evil GM

"That's all well and good", you say, "but how do I use this when I GM?"

Fear not. I will tell you.

This system is really only suited for those who use the same general style of GMing as I (and most of my friends) do: totally diceless. It says what the player wants his or hers character to be good at. You can then tailor the actual capabilities as you like them. If you want a low-power campaign, even using all ones points for a single very narrow skill is pretty shoddy. If you want a high-power campaign, even a single point (of hundreds) in a skill is awesome, and skills like "knows everything" become reasonable. It's up to you to decide. You know the players' wishes, it's your job to make them become real.

If you really want a system to back you up,you can use the numbers the players give to generate stats for your favourite RPG rulesystem. If someone has used 50 of his 100 points for "fighting", and you really want 100-point GURPS characters, you build a character with about half his points in fighting-related skills and advantages.

calle@lysator.liu.se
Last updated: Setting Orange, the 15 day of Chaos in the YOLD 3162, 20:52:29.