Scars of War Dev Blog Updates
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Category: News ArchiveHits: 693
Well, Build Points solves that problem. Like Shadowrun, each Race in SoW has a BP cost. The more exotic and powerful the Race, the more BP it costs. For example, your basic (Mixed Blood Human) costs 0 BP whereas a (Lazar) (a race which I introduced in previous blog posts) is the most expensive race, costing 60 BP. This solves my problem, even though character races are no longer balanced against each other directly they are still balanced within the overall character creation system. If you take a costly race that means you have less BP to spend on skills, attributes and traits. Or you may need to take more negative traits to balance it out.And Race and Nationality.
This change allows me to be more creative with the races I think. The way I look at it, more exotic races represent not only additional bonuses to the player but more interesting roleplaying opportunities. As I said, the Lazar is at the very end of the race scale. It is the most costly, exotic race. It also has the most interesting extra roleplaying opportunities. Bear in mind that these aren't necessarily positive, being a Lazar will result in a fair amount of prejudice and persecution, but it also results in a different experience of the game, certain extra options open up on top of the special bonuses Lazar receive. This is part of what you're buying when you choose to spend BP on an expensive race, roleplaying, not just stat modifiers.
In most fantasy, you have the Kingdom of the Humans, the Kingdom of the Elves, the Orc Lands, etc etc. I find this.very boring.
In real life, humanity is rather fond of playing musical chairs, culturally. While sure, there are places where you can find most people being of a certain race and cultural group, much of the time you will find different cultural groups within countries, even if people all look the same. War, religion, emigration.people move around. Sometimes they integrate into the whole but often there are small, tight-knit communities of said cultural groups in amidst the greater society, groups who maintain that culture's traditions.
SA, for example, is a melting pot. We have 12 official languages because we have so many different African cultures. Then there are the white immigrants. 2 main flavors there, the Dutch descendants and the British descendants (Or you can be like me and have both white bloodlines running in your veins). Then there are the Indians, Muslims and Chinese who were brought over to work, and the sub-groups of each of those. And all the colored people, all those of mixed heritage. And then there are the recent immigrants, the Canadians and North Africans and and and.
