QuoteAs you said, leaving power out of it, I can create literally anything with a point-build system.

Exactly. I wanted to smack that dude who kept saying (over and over!) how much he hated having to play "neophyte" characters.

It's called skill, man! You know, skill: Something that's usually very important to a GAME?

Back in the day, if your friend had a binder full of 12th level AD&D characters, it wasn't because he hated playing neophyte characters, it was because they all started out as 1st level nobodies and he was damn good at AD&D.

I still rue the day that the idea that RPGs required skill (as measured by a character's lifespan, advancement, accumulated equipment, etc) became gauche. Bunch of damn method actors and immature "instant gratification" munchkins ruined it for everyone. Look at White Wolf's stable of skill-free wankfests, from Vampire to Exalted, to see what I mean.

Imagine a baseball player asking why everybody can't just start with the batting average they want!

A powerful character used to mean something in this hobby.

Eh, I see considerable merit in the idea of encoding the setting in the character creation system, as with Burning Wheel, or many another lifepath system such as Harnmaster, RQ3, original Traveller, etc.

Then again I also enjoy playing "cinematic" games where the characters are already somewhat over-the-top in terms of ability, however that might be explained in terms of the game-world. So, again using BW as an example, I was somewhat frustrated by the way the chargen system wouldn't let me make a pulp-like figure in mid-career: skills come from lifepaths, and lifepaths age you.

Quote from: ReimdallAgreed.  It does, however, beg the question of flexibility for character growth and change after chargen.  I'm thinking of a knight I once played that tired of violence and wanted to focus on healing and potioncraft to balance out his negative impact on the world.

I can't believe I just wrote that.  :rolleyes:

But still, having even the possibility of occupation or class change, with some retention of the character's ability to affect the game, has always been important to me for character arc purposes.  I think a strict class system might break down a bit there.

Not arguing. I am not in favor of strict classing unless it is very easy to change the class. Loose classing or professions are my preferred method. Give a framework that allows the player to create their own template then allow progression in any direction. This allows a Engineer to have a hobby of target shooting and become one of the best shots in the world. At the core, an Engineer allowing them to do whatever engineering they do and beyond that a human being able to grow in different directions.

As for point build vs random chrgen, I think this is a bit of an illusion. Again, stricter version of both can be very restrictive. In a random method, allowing a rearrangement of stats and/or using a combination of point build and random will allow for much more flexibility in creating the character. I am more of the "character is a part of playing a character" type of player so stats/skills help but it is much more important to play the character the way you imagine.

As to skill of gaming the system, yes, to some lesser extent I agree with Yamo. I think sometimes that a lot of roleplaying overwhelms the roots of the hobby. I do believe in evolution of the RPG hobby and a greater amount of RP based games is one branch of it. I think (look at d20 and DND minis) the root of the hobby is still very much game oriented and not story oriented.

I think this is also the main problem a number of gamers have with the whole "Imagined Character Not Realized" issue. In a story, it is often very easy to think "I wish there were ninjas with laser eyes in this 12th century English romance because I liked them in the sci-fi pulp story I read last week". To an extent this happens with RPGs but I often see a much more narrow focus of plot and setting, in some ways, than in an open story. That is to say, most successful games are Euro-Fantasy with Arabic/African/Asian-Fantasy supplements tacked on. Some story series do this as well but they often stick with the same characters and setting throughout the series. So RPOGs are open in the sense of expanding the setting but focused in the type of story....hrm, not explaining myself well here.

What I was trying to say, in other words, is that it is often easier to write a muslim into Robin Hood that it is to write a Lesbian Ninja Hooker into the Victorian fantasy England setting of an RPG.

Bill