Yanking Out Merits

[amechra]

Alright, I'm working on elaborating on this - I've found that it's actually faster (for me, at least) to allocate skills that way. Plus, it's a better fit for the people I play with (last time, chargen took ages.)

My first addition is that your Specialities is tied to your Concepts. Each Concept gives you a Speciality. Done, simple, and quick.

Now, I also want to simplify the whole Merit selection process - an even more streamlined version of the little system in Mirrors would be ideal, though coming up with a set of generic Merit "packages" consisting of 3 dots of merits each that you could just grab would work too (with one dot being reserved for Allies, Contacts, or Status.)

How would you approach this kind of thing?

"I wouldn't" is a valid answer, but not a helpful or interesting one. Please don't be the jerk who rains on people's parades.

[ShadowKnight1224]

Quick and Dirty:

Characters choose two out of Physical, Mental, Social and Supernatural. The first choice gets 2 big merits at max dots or 4 small ones, the second gets 1 big merit at max dots or 2 small ones. Big merits are 4-5 dots' worth, small merits are 1-3 dots' worth.

[Xenesis]

I think I'd roughly subdivide the merits into some categories and run with it like that. I also think that you could just cull a lot of merits (and basically just use the CofD core book at most, maybe a handful of the supernatural ones if you're playing Vampires/Demons/Whatevs)

So for example, I'd ask a few questions for character creation that would give some ideas:

"What's your character's most significant relationship? (Personal or Professional)" - Pick from Allies, Status, Retainer, Mentor, True Friend etc. and make that person or organisation this Merit and plonk it in at a few dots.
"What's your character's biggest personal accomplishment?" - This is where I'd get them to pick from stuff like Professional Training, a Style, or some of the "impressive" ability merits (Stuff like Iron Skin, Interdisciplinary Spec, etc.). Again, pick something appropriate and give it a few dots.
"How does your character prefer to interact with the world?" - This is for stuff like Resources, Safe Place, Library and whatnot. Pick a single merit (or merit category in the case of stuff like Safe Place) that reflects how they feel like interacting with the world.

At this point you've likely got 3 Merits at 2-3 points each, which will hit the 7-dot limit for mortals. If not, I'd say go for asking for either an interesting quirk of a character (so another merit, or a way to justify something small but extra) or asking which of those three relationships are the most important and scaling the dots up and down.

Because yes, I agree - creation can take ages, especially with new players. I still run Character Creation Days when I'm starting a new chronicle for precisely that reason.

[amechra]

One idea that's come to mind is that I could just slap Area of Expertise/Interdisciplinary Speciality on all of the character's starting Specialities, and then run a three-level-web step.

How does this work?

Each player picks another player and gives them the Leveraged condition.
Then each player comes up with an NPC and gives them the Leveraged condition.
Then they pick one of the players or one of the NPCs that have been made up, and give themselves the Leveraged condition with regards to them.
You can't pick anyone twice.

In other words, everyone starts off with strings on a PC and an NPC, and owe a "favor" to at least one other person (likely more than one). Potentially, you could offer a selection of Conditions instead of just Leveraged - perhaps Embarrassing Secret, Swooning, Connected. and Leveraged?