Alternity Character Sheet
Romilda Tiger
Okay, you asked for it. Recent complaints levied at the nature of RPGnet reviews aired a desire for less D20 stuff and perhaps a few out of print games. Well, I shall deliver! This time I take a look at a game I consider all too under-rated: Alternity.
I have a secret to confess here. RPGnetters may find me to be one of those nutty D&D/D20 advocates. But my first love isn't really fantasy. It's SF. Much of my youth was spent watching Star Trek: TOS reruns after school and devouring books in the "space SF" vein. One of my favorites has always been Larry Niven, a very good storyteller with an eye for science as well.
Though D&D was my first game, I soon started to branch out and explore other games. Traveller (and its heir, MegaTraveller) was a big part of my "formative gaming experiences." Those were the days of wild and wooly space opera, intrepid investigation, and world rending warfare. It was great. I ran a MegaTraveller campaign for many years after GDW first went on to Traveller: The New Era (often referred to by some as "The New Error"), which I considered an inferior edition both due to the poor system and due to the implausible backstory.
Though I enjoyed MegaTraveller for years, even that wonderful workhorse got tired. It was time to look for something new. A company called Far Futures Enterprises tried to bring Traveller back with T4 the mechanics were an immediate turn-off to me. I have never held a high opinion of GURPS, so even when I heard they would be licensing Traveller, I was less than enthused. I played with my own homebrew system, but never had the time or persistence to finish. Likewise, many other offerings in the industry failed to impress me.
To be honest, when I saw a preview version of Alternity that a friend got a GenCon, that didn't impress me at first, either. Its very strange dice mechanic seemed gimmicky to me at the time, something that will usually eternally doom a game in my eyes.
When they came out with the real version of the Alternity Player's Handbook, being SF-starved I picked it up. I began to study its dice system and learned the beauty and genius of it. Eventually, the game earned my respect. Could this be the new Traveller on my gaming shelves?
Alternity is a game put out by TSR, whose design began before they were acquired by Wizards of the Coast. It was apparently an attempt to recreate what they had with D&D: a genre-specific but not world-specific system aimed at a given genre to which campaign settings could be tacked on to. It was a novel concept, one that players like myself who like home-grown settings could really appreciate.
But the approach had its problems. Under the control of Wizards of the Coast, the landscape changed. The company began to focus on fewer and fewer settings for its role-playing flagship, Dungeons and Dragons. What could this mean for their second string adoptee that they didn't really ask for in the first place? Nothing good, I assure you. Amid tales of waning sales, support for the Alternity line dwindled and nearly stopped. The X-Files-esque Dark*Matter setting caused a brief resurgence of the game, but ultimately it didn't change the fate of the game. When I heard that Wizards of the Coast had acquired the rights to publish a Star Wars game, I thought that this, at last, would be a chance to get Alternity the recognition it deserved.
Alas, it was not to be. Wizards of the Coast had its business plans with the D20 license in the works then, a plan that Alternity didn't fit into. Eventually it was announced that Star Wars would be a D20 product and that Alternity's days as an officially supported product are numbered. At the time of this writing, you can continue to buy Alternity material, but development of new material has halted.
The basic dice of the Alternity system is the D20. To succeed at a task, the player must roll equal or under r the PC's skill number to succeed (I will detail how skills are handled shortly.) If the character roll half this number, they get a good success. If they roll one quarter of their skill total or less, they get an amazing success.
So far, this sounds like a standard "roll under target number" mechanic. Here's where the system gets a little unusual. Instead of varying the difficulty by changing the target number, you add or subtract the result of one (sometimes more) situation die of a size according to the difficulty.
At first glance, this appears similar to some dice pool mechanics. But it really isn't, and it has some interesting and useful properties. In a "dice pool" type system, you vary the number of dice according to capability, difficulty of the task, or both. The odds associated with this sort of dice mechanic are a bell curve that varies in shape according to the number or type of dice used, and figuring the odds of a given roll requires some non-trivial calculations best left to statistics gurus like me. And even I don't like to do that icky stuff during a game.
While this sort of approach is problematic, strictly linear systems (i.e., that use one dice, like everyone's favorite, the D20 system) have some properties that may be undesirable as well. Using a d20 as an example, you have the same chance to roll a "1" as you do a "20" or any other number on the dice. This makes character's abilities vary wildly. While this works well in some more cinematic systems, in some more down to earth system, this degree of variance seems unrealistic.
The Alternity dice system in most instances creates a "trapezoid curve." That is, in the low and high ends of the scale, the odds taper off linearly. In the "middle region", the curve is flat, and odds vary just as if a D20 had been rolled each "point" is a 5% change in the odds. If you are adding a situation die, this middle region extends from N 1 to 21, where N is the size of the situation die.
The way I see it, this gives the Alternity dice system two very useful properties. First, it makes it easy for a DM to eyeball the odds of a given roll without resorting to complicated math during the game. Second, unlike a linear system, extreme results taper off in probability. In short, the Alternity system strikes a compromise between the ease of use of linear systems and consistent results of a bell curve system.
At the extreme high end, Alternity adds more than one extra dice to the roll. Once you are rolling D20 D20 to resolve tasks, each additional level of difficulty adds another D20. This is jumping into dice pool territory, but this isn't really a problem since at this point, you are really intended to fail.
The standard generation method is distributing 60 points among the 6 attributes, allowing an average of 10 in each attribute. This is slightly above the normal human average. Alternative generation methods, such as random generation, are provided in the Gamemaster's Guide.
The player can choose one of four professions for their characters: Combat Spec, Tech Op, Free Agent, or Diplomat. These professions are much broader than D&D classes. For example, engineers, medic, and pilots all very comfortably fit under the Tech Op profession. The choice of profession has two primary impacts on the character. First, it determines which skills the character can buy at a discount. Second, it gives the character a game related benefit: Combat Specs have an easier time with one weapon, Tech Ops can learn skills faster, Diplomats have a wider range of discount skills, and Free Agents get more "last resort points," points that grant the character a boon of luck.
Players are allowed to generate Alien PCs as well as humans, and 4 standard ones are included in the game. A character's race does not directly affect their statistics, but the minimums and maximums for the character's stats are determined by their race. The basic skills set of the character are determined by their race, and a race may have certain special characteristics and abilities.
Characters receive a number of starting skill points according to their intelligence. Characters can buy broad skills and specialty skills. Characters start out with 6 broad skills according to their race, and can buy more.
Broad skills are categorical and if you have one it only allows you to use any of the specialty skills on it at a number equal to the associated ability score. You cannot, however, add any ranks to a broad skill.
Once you have purchased a broad skill, you can purchase ranks in specialty skills under that broad skill. These skills are limited by your character's experience, but lets you extend your capabilities beyond what you can do with the broad skills.
Alternity characters do have levels, but the XP are precisely equivalent to skill points. The only real purpose the level serves is as a broad assessment of character power, and limits what special abilities a character can purchase. If you despise class/level related systems, you have little to fear from this system, as it is at its heart skill based. The familiar terminology should make the transition easier for those who cut their teeth on such systems, though.
For a more detailed look at the basics of the Alternity system, take a look at the fast play rules on the Wizards of the Coast website. At the time of this writing, the fast play rules are at:
The Alternity Player's Handbook is sorted into 15 Chapters, plus compiled tables and character sheet originals. The interior layout is mostly well done, attractive and readable. The major exception is that some sidebar material is offset in a dark green that is somewhat difficult to read.
Chapter 3 is entitled "Heroes in Action." It describes the basic mechanics of the game. The core dice mechanic is described above. The chapter also describes things such as how adventuring works, actions, combat, damage, and movement works.
Damage in Alternity is a semi-abstract system. All characters are allotted a number of Stun, Wound, and Mortal "boxes" according to their constitution score. Weapons inflict damage according to the success level that was inflicted on the to hit skill roll, but varies by weapon. For example, a 38 revolver does d4 wounds on an ordinary hit, d4 1 wounds on a good hit, and d4 mortal points on an amazing results. By comparison, a normal unarmed attack does d4 stun/d4 1 stun/d4 2 stun for a hit in the same category.
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