Morte's "slightly quicker" T20 chargen, for NPCs or starting PCs:
- Decide who they are, where they're from, what their story is and how old you want them to be. Do the world feats/skills.
- Set stats to 16,15,14,13,12,10,10,8 in any order (use 4d6 drop lowest or standard point buy if you prefer). Apply racial modifiers. Adjust stats for age if necessary. Set blood points = CON.
- Give them 1500XP for every year over age 18 (start earlier if belter/barbarian/Aslan). This sets their level to 1 at age 18, 2 at 19, 3 at 20, 4 at 22, 5 at 25, 6 at 28, 7 at 32, 8 at 37, 9 at 42, 10 at 48, 11 at 55, and 12 at 62.
- Give them any combination of class levels that makes sense (ref's decision) for the backstory. Roll stamina or use average.
- Subtotal skills points for each class, remembering the bonus for humans, and spend them.
- Spend the human level 1 bonus feat if you get it, your character level feats (at 1,3,6,9,12), and spend class bonus feats from the THB list for each class.
- For a PC, ref chooses a set of mustering out tables consistent with character's age and backstory. Roll. Give them rank/medals to fit the character concept.
- Equip. Play.
The above is an abstraction of the T20 rules -- it produces pretty similar results in less time.
For XP during play, the THB rules are already pretty simple (i.e. some fraction of a level for completing an adventure of a certain size).
In future I think I will run an alternate XP system that does not match T20: give them a level after 8 hours' play, then another after 16, then another after 24, then another after 32, then... This is even simpler than T20, and I prefer it because levelling slows over time.
