I was sitting here today and thinking about ways to get the characters in my game more involved, and have each player feel like their character is a star and not just some numbers on a page. An idea came to me, and I credit the idea to Karl Keesler when we had been talking about the Ghostbusters RPG by WEG.
He said he had found somewhere on the internet, that having each of your players write out the following – 1 Ally, 1 Rival and 1 Contact , or as he called it the 1x1x1 system (I’ve been labeling it as the ARC system, just for easy reference).
Thinking about this, it could really involve characters in the game, and it will open up doors for me as the person running the game.
I know quite a few of the White-Wolf games do get into using these three things, but its only if you pick it as an advantage or disadvantage.
I think making it part of the character creation method, will not only involve your players a bit more, but will show them you are serious about your game, and its not just a “blah blah let’s play because no one else wants to run something”.
Do you use this in your game?
Those categories are included on the new (Alpha) AD&D (2E, unfortunately they don't have sheets for 1E yet) character sheets at Myth Weavers, and as I was filling out my character, I just put something into those boxes as a natural part of the process. They ended up helping to define the character much more than his ability scores, class, race, or alignment, because when I moved on to the back story, ideas started flowing that I never would have imagined had I not done that first step of A-R-C.
Hmmm, I'll try it and see if it works.