[Carolyne Bolt]

We make characters based on our own ideas, but that's not how it works in real life. In real life you're born into a body you didn't pick, with talents you didn't pick and into a culture that'll help form who you are; again, a culture you didn't pick.

This got me thinking, why not do a character that's totally randomized? Dead-is-dead playthroughs typically have the philosophy of no reloads and everything that happens is set in stone. I wanna take it a step further and randomize my character, then play with whatever random role of a character I 'm dealt.


How would this work? Well...

Rules:

-Dead is dead. Your character dies, for any reason, then it's dead. End of their story, end of that character.
-hardcoe mode. Why? So companions can die. Your companions will be playing Dead-is-Dead aswell. If Boone dies? No reloading, he's dead.
-Seriously, NO RELOADING. I don't care if you needed to complete a quest to earn Boone's trust and do his personal quest, but then a giant Radscorpion came out of nowhere and ate Ranger Milo's face off, preventing you from unlocking Boone's personal quest. That's how the dice roll. If you screw up and take the wrong step to complete a quest in a way that gets you that sweet weapon? Then you screwed up, live and learn.
-You will randomize your characters stats. Some things are optional, but at the very least, you will randomize their SPECIAL, their tagged skills and their traits.



Now how do you randomize the stats, and what are you randomizing? Here: http://www.randomizer.org/form.htm

What can you randomize?

Gender (optional, since some may hate playing the opposite gender) - Set the randomizer to only do one set of numbers, one number per set, and numbers ranging from 1 to 2. Rolling a one makes you male, rolling a two makes you female

Race (optional, since some may want to make a character face themselves) - Set the randomizer to only one set of numbers, one number per set, and numbers ranging from 1 to 4. Rolling a 1 is African American, 2 is Asian, 3 is Caucasian and 4 is Latino

Preset face (optional, since some may prefer to make their own character's face) - Set the number range from 1 to 10. The number you get represents the preset you'll use

SPECIAL (required) - Admittedly, this isn't the fastest system. If anyone knows a better system, feel free to say so. Basically though, use the randomizer, set the range from 1-7. A one represents Strength, two is Perception, etc etc etc. You could roll the thing 40 times to get 40 stats, putting a tally mark next to each stat until you have 40 total (ignore any rolls into a stat after it's hit 10; reroll and put the stat elsewhere in that case), or you could set the randomizer "how many numbers per set" category to 40 (remember to switch "unique numbers" to "no" if you do this), though again you'll need to go through and make sure none of them exceed 10, rerolling any spare stats that do. With this, you'll have 40 stat points distributed among the 7 SPECIAL points, and thus your character's SPECIAL.

Tagged skills (required) - Set the randomizer range from 1 to 13, roll three times, three numbers per set, unique numbers turned on. Refer to this list: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_skills Going by alphabetical order, rolling a one means you tag Barter, rolling a 12 means you tag Survival, a 13 is Unarmed, etc etc etc. Obviously you won't be limited to just these skills, but you should try to prioritize them above the other 10, perhaps by leveling them fastest or by taking more perks governed by the three you picked.

Traits (required) - Same as with skills, except turn off "unique numbers" set the range from 1 til 17 if you have OWB, 1 to 11 if you do not. Roll twice, reroll the second if it's the same as your first. Refer to this list: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_traits Again, the number you receive refers to the traits in the list by alphabetical order, i.e., rolling a 2 gives you Fast Shot. However, just for convenience's sake, we're referring to that list on the wiki, so the OWB traits are NOT in alphabetical order, but rather how they appear on that list. 16 for example then represents Skilled. Rolling a 17 with OWB or an 11 without OWB represents not using that trait slot, so getting two 17's/11's would mean you simply take no traits.


Army you support (optional, some people may want to choose this themselves) - Set the randomizer range from 1 to 4. One is Indy Vegas, Two is House, Three is NCR, Four is Legion. Whichever number you roll represents what army you support. Using this does NOT mean you have to be a die-hard fan of the army you roll; you're allowed to work against them in side quests, but you must support them in the main quest.

Karma (optional, some people may want to choose this themselves) - Set the range from 1 to 3. One is Good, two is Neutral, three is Evil. What you roll simply acts as an outline for how your character tends to act and it's up to you to expand upon it. Someone who rolls an evil character for example doesn't have to be evil at all times, but needs some form of evil tendency when completing (or not completing) quests. (greed, lying, laziness, aggressiveness) This also determines which level 50 perk you're allowed to take.

Based on the above two (karma and Army you support), if you choose to roll them at all, you can then write whatever backstory you want for your character within those two confines.


What about perks? Way too many to randomize. You can take any perk that your character can take BUT!!! perhaps you should have a tendency to take perks that relate to your three tagged skills, so as to give the tagged skills more meaning.

What if I roll Trigger Discipline and Fast Shot together? Tough! If you REALLY want to I supposed you can reroll both traits, but part of the idea behind this is simply using the hand you're dealt and trying to survive with it.

What CAN I pick? Anything not listed here. The character name, your perks, personality traits of your character, your decisions in the DLC. That's up to you. Hell, you could even roll the DLC outcomes if you like.

What if I loathe the character I've ended up with? Of course this is all about fun, so if you absolutely LOATHE the character, then fine, reroll. That's why some of those things are optional. I personally think this would be most fun if people used the full formula, but fine if you absolutely refuse. But you have to ROLL your character. Perhaps what you could do is roll three characters and then pick one of those three?




I went ahead and tried this system to produce three characters, just to see what variants it came up with, here's what I got:

Character 1:

Spoiler

Male
Asian
Preset 3


S 5
P 10
E 6
C 5
I 5
A 4
L 5

Survival
Science
Medicine

Fast Shot
Trigger Discipline (yes, he got the [censored] combo and yes I'll be using him no firearms for him I guess)

Indy Vegas

Good karma

Character 2:

Spoiler

Male
African American
Preset 10


S 6
P 6
E 5
C 6
I 5
A 5
L 7

Unarmed
Barter
Survival

Kamikaze
Four Eyes

NCR
Evil

Character 3:

Spoiler

Female
Asian
Preset 6

S 6
P 5
E 4
C 3
I 6
A 8
L 8

Sneak
Explosives
Barter

Hot Blooded
Four Eyes

NCR
Good

So, anyone game? I'm personally ready and willing to play all three of those characters I made, and I think it'd be interesting to see what kind of god-like or total crap characters (like my first one ) we're dealt and see who can take a randomized character the furthest in a DID playthrough.