Introduction

Generic Destinies (GD) is a highly streamlined roleplaying system aimed at providing hassle-free gaming without sacrificing important detail. It is based on the following observations:

• 'Stats' aren't as clearly defined in reality as they are in RPGs, and certainly don't follow a linear gradient between two numbers along which everyone must fall. Some people are physically weak, others are stronger than average, but having a stat called 'strength' and chopping it up into 15 (3-18 systems) or 100 (percentile systems) slots is unrealistic. Just try and come up with a scaled list of 15 adjectives describing these strength levels and you'll see what this means. Most of the numbers don't have a real-world equivalent - so why bother with them?

• There are some intrinsic characteristics out there, but they relate to groups of activities rather than intrinsic qualities. People are 'good with their hands', they're 'lateral thinkers', or they have 'a good grasp of facts', and so on. Hence, it seems that if such a thing as 'stats' exist at all, they exist in closer association to the skills they govern than is traditionally the case with RPG systems. Measures like EQ are examples of some of the 'stats' which are thought to exist in the real world.

• Real professionals are capable of producing a result 2-3 times more 'successful' than a trainee or novice (that's why their salaries are 2-3 times higher). Often, this 'success' is measured in terms of the speed with which a competent result can be achieved as well as the quality, so a pro could produce an equivalent result to the trainee in 30-50% of the time, or they could produce an exceptionally high-class result in the same time frame. Usually, this choice is made before the task is actually attempted.

• In reality, you don't always know what skill to use. Often, we approach a problem with the shoe on entirely the wrong foot, skill-wise, and suffer penalties as a result - conversely, sometimes an unlikely, half-remembered knack or technique we picked up in high school proves to be just the thing that a situation requires. In most RPGs, this level of uncertainty is lost - the GM tells you to roll something, so that's what you do. There's no mechanism for modeling either of the instances mentioned above, and the whole thing comes across a little staged - turning you into an awkward middleman between the GM and your character sheet.

• Novices 'get lucky' more often than pros. Of course, they also screw up more often. This is because pros have more control of the results they get; if they want to achieve the kind of critical success that novices sometimes pull off through 'beginner's luck', they make it happen; it rarely arrives unannounced.

GD tries to address these observations in various ways, mostly by changing the required interaction between GM and player and using a dice-rolling system which generates results fitting the continuum between unskilled and expert mentioned above. These rules are discussed in more detail below.

The GD rules are divided into two sections; the Setup section (which you are reading now), which covers the fundamentals of the system and the rules for character creation, and the Game Rules section, which contains the minute-by-minute play rules for handling action resolution, combat, experience, and so forth. Links between the two sections are provided at the the bottom of each document.

Rolling the Dice

Most roleplayers are familiar with the concept of the percentile roll (d100 or d%). For the sheltered few, this roll involves rolling two ten-sided (polyhedral) dice, reading one as the tens digit, and one as the units digit. Thus, a roll of '4' and '5' gives a percentile result of '45%'.

GD uses a variant of this system in which either or both of the ten-sided dice may be replaced by another polyhedral die, from a d4 to a d12, depending on the skill and natural talent of the character performing the action. These rolls, when necessary, are referred to by the maximum value they are capable of generating; a d68 would thus be use a d6 to generate a tens digit, and a d8 to generate a units digit.

Obviously, as with all systems using composite dice-rolling techniques like the percentile roll, it's important for players to nominate which die stands for the tens and which stands for the unit if they are rolling two of the same dice (for instance, two d8s). This can either be done by a pre-arranged scheme ('the red die is always tens, the green die is always units'), or the dice can simply be rolled one by one.

The Stats

Stats are intrinsic areas of talent described above. Note that these stats may be edited to suit your game as required; for instance, you may wish to split the Technique stat into two sub-categories governing 'application' and 'textbook' techniques. Although splitting the stats too finely isn't recommended, some specialization of this sort is perfectly within the capabilities of the system. GD uses the following stats:

Stats range between level 4 and level 12, increasing in skips of 2 and corresponding to the dice type with the same value as the skill. Normal human range is between 4 and 10 inclusive; level 12 is reserved for beings with literally superhuman talents, and may not be applied to a starting character unless the GM says so. A breakdown of these levels and what they mean for each stat is as follows:

The process of assigning levels to a character's various stats is discussed in the character creation chapter; for now, all that is required is for you to familiarize yourself with the five stats and have them in the back of your mind as you read on.

The Skills

This is where things get really freeform.

Your character's skills are entirely up to you. Player-specified skills are by no means a new phenomenon; they are used in several successful game systems (Over the Edge, Unknown Armies, RISUS), and allow your character to be more effectively distinguished from other characters with an equivalent focus, even if their numerical aspects are the same. Consider the difference between a character with a Burning the Midnight Oil skill and one who has Stay Awake - or between someone who has Sneaking Around versus someone who has Catlike Stealth. The game effects of these skills may be identical (fatigue resistance in the first case; avoiding detection in the second), but their individualized titles help define the characters they belong to. Two gunmen open fire; they both roll identically, doing identical damage. But one is using his One Shot, One Kill skill, and the other is using her Twin Gun Frenzy skill. See the difference?

Of course, as a GM, there's nothing to stop you using a more formal list of skills if you want. Simply compile such a list beforehand, and make sure your players go through their character's skill choices and note down which skill matches which title.

Skills, like stats, are defined by which type of dice you get to roll when you attempt a task. Unlike stats, however, skills top out at level 10; someone who has a skill of 10 in an area has a complete and deep understanding of the field, and is as good as they are ever going to get. A more detailed breakdown of the meanings behind the various skill levels is as follows:

Skills are generally associated with the stat which most closely describes the natural talents on which the skill's use is based.

• Fighting, defensive and firearm skills are associated with the COMBAT stat.
• Natural, survival or reflexive skills (climbing, swimming, sports, weight lifting) are associated with the BODY stat.
• Social or perception-based skills are associated with the AWARENESS stat.
• Study-based skills (the various sciences, humanities, and lores) are associated with the INTELLECT stat.
• Manipulation, craft, or repair skills (including medical skills) are associated with the TECHNIQUE stat.

These assignments are not set in stone; a skill may be tacked on to any stat for the purposes of a roll, because each skill has has aspects which touch on the five stats above; the association simply refers to the 'default' which can be assumed if no other association is requested. This is explained more fully in the Skill and Stat Checks section, below.

A starting character will typically have between 3 and 5 skills, so, it should be recognized that most characters will not have a skill for every action that makes up their daily lives. Two good examples are the use of computers and automobiles. It requires no particular skill to fire up a PC or drive across town; characters should only take skills in these areas if they want to reflect that they are activities which they are particularly good at. Someone with a level 4 Computers skill, for instance, might work part-time at a 24-hour IT helpdesk, and is capable of doing their own hardware upgrades and installations. Someone with a level 4 in Driving either works from a car (pizza delivery driver) or drives cars as a leisure pursuit (drag racing, go-karting, off-road). Both levels indicate someone with a significant edge over the average member of the public.

Hence, in creating a character, the trick is to think of the four or five things your character does best, give them names, and use them as a basis for your skill choices. The process of assigning levels to a character's various skills is discussed in the Character Creation section.

Sometimes, a character has a feature which is too broad to fit into a single skill, because it has a global effect on many types of activity. Take the example of someone who considers one of the defining points of their character to be the fact that they are 'emotionless'. This doesn't fit easily under any stat (except possibly AWARENESS); in addition, its action would be more realistically portrayed as a modifier to some other skill, rather than being a skill of its own. The same would go for someone who wants their character to be 'artistic', to 'look out for the little guy', or to have a 'compelling voice'. Additionally, some features of a character don't fit the skill scale as well as skills should. For instance, how does one rate something like 'emotionless'? It's not like there are part-time, full-time, professional, and grand master practitioners of emotionlessness - either you are, or you aren't.

For these reasons, characters may also have Hooks and Triggers. Hooks and Triggers are basically the same thing, except that Hooks are generally positive and/or useful, and Triggers are generally negative and/or inconvenient. Of course, exceptions exist (what if being emotionless is an advantage for some characters?), and for this reason it isn't vitally important that items in this category be classified as one or the other, because they can have both positive and negative effects depending on the situation - these effects being referred to, unsurprisingly, as Hook Effects and Trigger Effects.

These effects will be more fully detailed in the Skill and Stat Checks section, and the process of choosing them is covered in the Character Creation section. For now, all that is important is to go through the list of your character's 5 or 6 defining points you made previously, and decide whether any of them are better suited to being Hooks or Triggers than skills. Ideal raw material for your characters Hooks are any driving goals (wiping out illiteracy, being popular) or cherished identities (street player, toughest cop on the streets, good parent) they may have; similarly, any phobias, fears, or insecurities you see then having would make good Triggers. A combination of 2-3 Hooks and Triggers make a respectable starting profile for a character; any more is usually just a waste of points. Remember that Hooks and Triggers should be specific enough that misunderstandings don't occur; 'Specialist (Demolitions)' is fine, but 'Good at Everything' is pushing it.

Hooks and Triggers, of course, are a great way to handle characters who are great at some aspects of a stat, but lousy at others; a muscle-bound and clumsy bruiser could use a combination of cheap Hooks and Triggers to customize his or her character so that these two contradictory features don't pose a problem for picking a BODY stat level.

To sum the whole shebang up; Hooks and Triggers are who you are, Skills are what you can do.

Character Creation

Now that you have a rough idea of your character(s), it's time to give them a set of numbers to hang things on. You may want to read ahead and browse the Game Rules before you do so, to familiarize yourself with what effects your various choices will have, but it isn't necessary; you have enough information in this section, and you can always come back and change the numbers around afterwards. Got a pencil and scrap of paper ready? Then let's begin...

First of all, you'll need to decide where your various stat levels are going to lie. The default level is 6; that is to say, if you wanted to play Joe or Jane Average and made no adjustments to their stats, you'd end up with level 6 in each stat - COMBAT, BODY, AWARENESS, INTELLECT and TECHNIQUE. However, few people are as undeviatingly 'average' as this. For starters, most first-world suburbanites have COMBAT at level 4, not level 6 - barring a few schoolyard brawls, they've never been in a serious fight. Conversely, people in warzones or inner-city ghettoes might have BODY or INTELLECT at level 4, but COMBAT or AWARENESS at level 8 to reflect the effects of living in a dangerous environment where a single misstep might mean death or injury. And that's just the regular citizenry - PCs who are SWAT team members, vampire hunters, prohibition agents or cultist are certainly going to have stats far on either side of level 6. The procedure for assigning stats is as follows:

• For every 2-point level drop in one stat, you can put another stat up by the a single 2-point level. In other word, if you drop one stat from its default level of 6 to level 4, you could put one other stat up from level 6 to level 8. You could repeat this process with another level 6 stat to put the level 8 stat up to level 10

• Another way of thinking about it is that the sum of your stat levels must be no more than 30, but that you can allocate the points however you like, providing that no stats fall below level 4 or above level 10.

• The acceptable combinations are thus 10/8/4/4/4, 8/8/6/4/4, 8/6/6/6/4, and 6/6/6/6/6.

• Something else you can do with your skill levels, if you insist, is transfer them to the pool of points you get to spend on skills, Hook, and Triggers, and back. There's a 2:1 exchange rate between the two pools; if you want to play someone with more sub-average stats than super-average stats (say, 8/6/6/4/4), you can spend twice as many points as you get from dropping stats, on raising skills and Hooks. The exchange works both ways, but because of the exchange rate you have to give up 4 skill levels to get a single 2-point level increase on a stat.

If this seems unclear, don't worry; there's an example at the end of the next paragraph to illustrate the process in all its detail.

Once your character has their stats, the next step is to determine their skills. Each character gets 22 points to allocate to skills, plus or minus any that were transferred from or to the stat pool. Getting a skill at a certain level costs as many points as that level - so, if you wanted Screech Like A Banshee at level six, you'd have to ante up six skill points for it. Unlike stats, there are no default levels; if you want a stat, you have to pay its full price.

You also have to pay for all the Hooks you select out of your skill points; each Hook costs 2 skill points. Triggers, on the other hand, actually give you free skill points to make up for the inconvenience they're going to cause. You don't have to spend all your skill points; any skill points left over get multiplied by 5 and added to your Experience Points, which are the points you use to increase your character's skills and stats over time.

The last step in creating your character is to work out their Wound Points. Wound Points are the continuum down which your character travels on the road from full health to untimely death; they represent the aggregate of a character's toughness, pain resistance, luck, and general resilience. Wound Points are equal to:

• the sum of a character's BODY and COMBAT stats, multiplied by 5, plus
• the levels of any BODY skills appropriate to pain resistance or toughness, plus
• 10 for every appropriate Hook which the GM feels is appropriate to surviving injury

Starting characters should thus have anywhere between 40 and upwards of 110 Wound Points. Injuries will be dealt with in more detail in the Combat and Injury section, but, very briefly, and wound which causes the loss of more than 20% of a character's Wound Points is likely to stun them, and any attack which causes the loss of 50% of their Wound Points is a serious wound which will require medical treatment if death through shock and bleeding is to be avoided.

After compiling a short list of your character's gear, and a few notes on their personality and present circumstances, you're ready to go! Rules for 'going', and all the assorted sub-tasks associated with 'going', are in Section 2. Alternately, an example of character creation is provided below if you're still a little hazy on the whole thing.

Vinnie is your standard dangerous 1930's Mafioso, but one with a taste for the occult. He's a little guy with a smoker's cough and the constitution of a jellyfish - but when his .32s come out, people start turning up with lots of holes in them. He's wanted by the New York mob after running a double cross on them, and he's a full-time bonded troubleshooter for the FBI Special Investigations wing under the enigmatic Director Goldstein.

First off, we want Vinnie to be pretty dangerous in a fight, which means a d8 or a d10 in COMBAT. He's also a cat burglar, which would normally fall under BODY, but because he's disastrously out of shape, we can drop his BODY and use a Hook at some later point to handle his second-story skills. His AWARENESS and INTELLECT, we've decided, should be normal, and he needs a fair TECHNIQUE for picking locks and fixing his guns. So, we drop BODY to 4, increase COMBAT to 8, and move on to the skill pool to see if we can't rustle up some more points to spend on COMBAT and TECHNIQUE. We give Vinnie the 'Cat Burglar' Hook for 2 points, level 8 in 'Breaking and Entering' and 'Silenced Pistol', and level 4 in 'Federal Agent Training' (which covers basic law, forensics, etc.). That uses up our 22 points, but we haven't picked any Triggers yet - and we have two good ones in mind: 'Wanted Man' (the price the NY mob has put on his head) and 'Owned by the FBI' (the FBI got him out of jail; if her doesn't play along, they could make life very miserable for him). That frees up 4 skill points, which we can take back to the stat pool and convert to 2 stat points. Nice as it would be to have COMBAT at level 10, we settle for putting Vinnie's TECHNIQUE up to level 8, and resolve to put COMBAT up with experience points at a later date.

In a puff of smoke from his Lucky Strike and the barely-audible rustle of a concealed shoulder holster, Vinnie is ready for action!

Reckon you're ready for Section 2? Lead on, MacDuff...

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