The premise is a simple one. How do you challenge yourself as a player in CF. I'm not talking set a goal of this char is going to get 50 PKs or something, most of us can design a char to accomplish a goal when we have the goal in mind first.

Lots of us think of our chars ahead of time and tailor the char to what we want. So we think of what build do we want to play (some do it based on a cabal, a class, or a race- but it does not really matter)? And then we design a char around that idea that fits our playstyle. We tailor a character to suit an idea for a char that we think we want to play.

To me this creates a problem, which is truthfully, it's boring in the sense that you'll usually play something you're comfortable with. Also, many times a player tries the build, they don't get the desired result, and delete. And then they sit there trying to think of other builds and such.

I find the biggest impediment to me playing a character at the moment is actually choice of what to play. I know one person who plays CF, and our solution was CF challenge mode. The idea is that the char dictates to the player, instead of the other way around.

It's simple actually. Using an RNG every aspect of a char is determined randomly. And I mean every choice, outside of char name. Your Race, class, gender, hometown, cabal, sphere, legacies, affinity, weapon specialization, ranger specialization, home terrains, thief paths, paladin dedication, warpriest training, orc adaptation... whatever a player has a choice in.

I remove uncaballed and herald as cabal choices since herald would be too common since it is the only indiscriminate cabal. (Chaotic neutral conjurer gets uncaballed by default.) All of it is randomly assigned to you- with the caveat you can't use things like mage gets battle cabal- Cabal choice has to be a viable choice based on your previous rolls. Then, to make the challenge harder, every char must take two random non-stat based flaws. For empowerment chars, you take a random imm choice, and take one of their spheres at random.

I did it a few times for the sake of posting this, oddly enough, I got druid both times.
The first result ended up as:
Cloud Male Druid Galadon Neutral (which by default made me nexus) Daevryn follower, sphere lust, with macho and death taboo.

My next random was an
Arial Male Druid Galadon Chaotic (so outlander by default) Akresius follower, sphere victory, with gimpy and hemophiliac.

Either of those chars, had I played them out, would have been completely outside my comfort zone, and been a challenge. But more importantly, it would have gotten me thinking about how to create a role to suit the char, instead of a char to suit a role.

I am not playing either of those though, since I am currently playing a different randomized character, which is way out of my comfort zone too.

Anyway, was just a thought, maybe some people will take this approach and we'll see some interesting less cookie cutter builds running around in the future. I wouldn't mind seeing a random option during character creation that did this for you even :)

CF is about praying to gods, four legacies, role contests, quest forms, any kind of additional powers and so on.


I recieved the most unreasonable hatred, envy and blatant lies from imms when played in the most challenge mode - as Karr and Achundald (who didn't wear anything at all).

I think CF is about whatever you want it to be about.

If that's going for four legacies or a quest form, so be it.

If it's about writing fun roles and playing them out, so be that too.

The only way to "lose" CF is to not have fun.

If we do have fun, great, you won the game.

If we don't, just roll up another and see what becomes of it.

Your post makes it sound like you haven't had any fun playing CF recently.

Maybe it's time to reevaluate what you're trying to get out it.

Is if you were always assigned an Orc, but your adaptation was chosen for you. That way, you have to play something outside of your comfort zone, add to the orc horde, and you'll never know which adaptation you're going to get!

Tantum est.

Although I have a list of characters I want to try that is a mile long already, some of which are already out of my comfort zone. Some used to be out of my comfort zone, but, I've played with them enough to give a serious go at them and some that are just plain in my wheel house.

It really would help me learn different game aspects better and play a char I wouldn't normally do. But, I honestly feel like its getting to be such a time input to play and develop a character that I don't want to waste my time on something I don't think I'll have a chance to enjoy.

and uncovered by level 20 or so

but i think the above is fun. I thought about crowd-sourcing for similar effect 2 or 3 years ago.

Then it can it stickied next to the thief tools and whatnot on qhcf.

A random character generator a few years ago. It was a jar/executable.

No idea what happened to it.

it's on QHCF still I think. It doesn't exactly roll your whole character and it puts silly stories in there, but iirc it does do race/class/alignment/sphere

And doesn't work anymore. :c

So I can't tell if that's the one I'm thinking of or not.

So it works no longer for me either. It worked at some point.

I've done what you propose. I've ended up with a gnome polearm warrior, dark-elf ranger (Welvinyon), and a ton that I never get to really play. My time to play varies so a lot of times I end up deleting very early.

That would be incredible if there were a built in random option.

I didn't add sphere/god/flaws to it though, that's a good idea and I will likely try it.