While I don't disagree with everything you're saying Xavier, the benefits you speak of aren't tied to game-prep -- you can have that kind of collaboration and creation during and in-between sessions after the campaign begins.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;541706Exactly.

Pregen = Not My Guy = Don't Give a Fuck.

Randomly Generated Guy = My Guy = Give a Fuck.

Exactly.

Quote from: chaosvoyager;541701First, playing a randomly generated character and playing a pregen are EXACTLY THE SAME from a player's POV.

Given a sufficiently large number of pregenerated characters that cover all of the possible rolls and choices, that is mechanically correct but still not correct from either a player perception perspective or a typical presentation perspective.

If everyone in the Pinewood Derby starts out with an identical kit and has to build cars to very specific specifications, from the same perspective, the cars are identical.  But what makes them different is that everyone puts their own kit together, tweaks what they put together, paints it differently, and basically makes it their own.  But what really personalizes each car is that each participant (perhaps with some help) actually creates their own car, even if it's statistically identical to the car built by hundreds of other participants.  The act of creation personalizes the creation.  Buying a prebuilt car off the shelf would not have that personal attachment, even if the results were superior to what a person could build themselves.

As for the typical presentation of pregenerated characters, games generally provide so much information with the character that there is little room for personalization or customization.  They generally come with a picture, equipment list, backstory, perhaps some fiction, and even common sayings.  Including pregenerated characters seems to bring out the frustrated novelist in role-playing game writers and that's not what the hobby needs.

Quote from: chaosvoyager;541701Second, here's how character creation typically went for me:

• Read the setting info, speak to the GM, and wait until a character concept comes to me.
• Try to implement that concept in game.
• Find out I cannot implement that concept.
  
• Compromise my vision in order to implement my character.
• Become overwhelmed and frustrated with the options.
• Become familiar enough with the options that I get distracted.
• Start optimizing combinations for effectiveness.
• End up with a character I don't know 0_o

In my experience, D&D isn't about trying to implement a concept but about creating a concept that fits a rough idea and some random rolls.  And it is my opinion that one of the biggest things causing problems in the hobby is the tension between people who know what they want and get frustrated by rules that tell them they can't have it and people who want to be surprised by what the results produced by the rules.  The people who know what they want look for ways to replace random rolls with player and/or GM fiat (this is the root cause of people wanting "narrative control" over the game) and people who want to be surprised embrace the random rolls and have little use for deciding what happens.

Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;541706Exactly.

Pregen = Not My Guy = Don't Give a Fuck.

Randomly Generated Guy = My Guy = Give a Fuck.

Exactly. (Thirded)

Quote from: Black Vulmea;541619:hand:

Backstory is overrated. Develop-in-play for me, thanks.

This x1000

Quote from: Marleycat;5416594 short sentences and I'm Batman.

Heh.  If I was in the market for a sig quote, this would be in my shopping cart.

See, I like Traveller pcgen, 'cause it's interesting, and has enough randomness that it feels like a game in itself.  It takes a minute, but I'm fascinated to see what kind of dude emerges (or doesn't, depending on what service he ended up in  ).  

But making a guy in All Flesh Must Be Eaten - a game and a system I really enjoy - is just a pain in the ass, 'cause there's a lot of pointbuy accounting, and I have to make all the decisions.  That's not a game to me, it's a chore.

Then there's HackMaster 4e.  Character creation - especially if you use the class book lifepath stuff (which is basically adapted straight out of Central Casting) takes FOREVER.  And there's a lot of decision-making (especially in skill  selection), but there's also a lot of gambling (ESPECIALLY in rolling for Quirks & Flaws) and a lot of interesting random event stuff (in the Priors & Particulars section, and in the class training stuff from the splats).  So it's a rewarding process for me.  (Hack is an interesting beast - it's an amazing game and I enjoy what it does, but there's an awful lot I'd never want to see in my day-to-day D&D.)

Quote from: Peregrin;541982While I don't disagree with everything you're saying Xavier, the benefits you speak of aren't tied to game-prep -- you can have that kind of collaboration and creation during and in-between sessions after the campaign begins.

I didn't say they were tied strictly to game prep; the 'best campaigns' I referred to previously benefited from collaboration between the players and GM before and during the game. My point was that I disagreed with Black Vulmea's contention that character background material prior to start-of-game was nothing but meaningless "fanwank" which served no useful purpose.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;542109My point was that I disagreed with Black Vulmea's contention that character background material prior to start-of-game was nothing but meaningless "fanwank" which served no useful purpose.

Except that's not what I said.

I said that making up something by yourself out-of-game is inferior to the stuff that comes out of the shared experience of actual play.

I also said that backgrounds are useful to some players to help them get into their roleplaying frame of mind, and as such they are welcome to write as much as they find helpful to that end. So no, I don't thing backstories are useless - I don't find them useful for the same things you appear to, however.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;541981Except when they're the same thing. The best role-playing groups I've had the pleasure of gaming with made it a requirement to write up a complete character background, which the GM put to good use in the campaign. The world-building wasn't all up to the GM; it was a cooperative effort with the full participation of the players.

That may work well for you, but for me, when I'm a player I want nothing to do with world-building outside of actual play. I'll make the world in my image in-character, without the metagaming that some gamers can't seem to live without.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;541981This distinction is meaningless: background material IS for use during actual play, with everyone else participating.

This discussion would go so much better if you'd actually respond to what I write, instead of what you think I'm writing.

I never said background material isn't for use in actual play; I said it's not as interesting as the stuff that comes out of actual play.

Saying, 'My character hates the baron de Bauchery because he ravished my sister when I was a boy,' is nowhere near as interesting, or as compelling, as, 'My character hates the baron de Bauchery because last week he stuck a rapier in another player's character's eye.' Everyone at the table experienced the death of the player character at the hands of the baron - no one experienced the long-ago ravishing of the totally made-up sister, not even the player who wrote the background.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;541981See above; the campaigns in which our GM actually put our backgrounds to use in creating our campaign were the most immersive that I've been in, and they had the best role-playing. In contrast, I've been in more games than I can count where character backgrounds weren't required, and if offered were seldom used; most of them were dull and uninspiring.

All that proves is that too many gamers believe they're supposed to invent interesting stuff rather than do interesting stuff, that a background that never happened is in some way the same as the experience of playing the game.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;541981I'll just let the "fanwank" thing slide for now.

Fanwank isn't pejorative, so get over it, already.

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;541981However, it's my opinion that a "passive" player is one who puts little to no effort into the creative process: he can't be bothered to come up with a character story, even if it would be useful and fun for himself and the GM.

The creative process that matters most is the one that happens at the table when the dice are rolling, and that's where I want the players to invest their energy. Stop trying to invent history, and go make some already.

Quote from: John Morrow;542043And it is my opinion that one of the biggest things causing problems in the hobby is the tension between people who know what they want and get frustrated by rules that tell them they can't have it and people who want to be surprised by what the results produced by the rules.  The people who know what they want look for ways to replace random rolls with player and/or GM fiat (this is the root cause of people wanting "narrative control" over the game) and people who want to be surprised embrace the random rolls and have little use for deciding what happens.

Dunno.  I think most people (and games) fall somewhere in the middle.  It's more an issue of understanding what the purpose of your ruleset is, and designing around that.  Some people hate D&D's 3d6 down the line approach in OD&D/Basic, but love REIGN's one-roll chargen.  

Context, more than personal preference, can make or break a game mechanic.  Nobody complains that Team Fortress 2 doesn't have grenades, because in that game not having them objectively improved the play experience.  But that doesn't mean grenades are bad, because if you play Halo, they make perfect sense and make for an extremely enjoyable game.

e:

Also, I don't see this as having anything to do with story-gaming, or wanting to "control the narrative" or whatever so much as it is just a design thing and different takes on what's a reasonable application of random elements.  It's a debate that's also been going on in the board-game community, too.

One reason I hate D&D is because it has a reverse lifepath problem. That is, you end up planning your advancement well in advance of any play, which in my book is even WORSE that having a background that may not fit the campaign. At least in the latter you're open to the direction the campaign takes you.

Quote from: Marleycat;541772Hmm ...sounds like 4e to me.

0_o

How did that in any way sound like 4e? Cause from what little experience I have with it its the exact opposite.

Quote from: Melan;541775In adventure stories, characters are first and foremost defined by their actions, the way they interact with their environment.

But action is only part of it. Motive and point of view are as important, or else you can end up with a generic action achieving robot.

That's one of the things character background is supposed to do on the player's side: Establish motive and perspective. But if you can do that without a background, rock on.

Quote from: Melan;541824That's an... interesting analogy.

And not entirely accurate. That is, you should be responsible for your own 'fun', but other people play a critical part too, and can make it possible for you to have more or less fun.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;541847There's vastly more meaning attached to the things you fight for that arise out of actual play than the fanwank on your character sheet.

What if that fanwank consists of events generated by the game's lifepath and character generation system?

Quote from: Black Vulmea;541847Character backgrounds are used to shortcut actual play.

I'll go even farther and say that character generation itself shortcuts 'actual play'.

Quote from: John Morrow;542043If everyone in the Pinewood Derby starts out with an identical kit and has to build cars to very specific specifications, from the same perspective, the cars are identical.  But what makes them different is that everyone puts their own kit together, tweaks what they put together, paints it differently, and basically makes it their own.  But what really personalizes each car is that each participant (perhaps with some help) actually creates their own car, even if it's statistically identical to the car built by hundreds of other participants.  The act of creation personalizes the creation.  Buying a prebuilt car off the shelf would not have that personal attachment, even if the results were superior to what a person could build themselves.

I get that. But the processes being compared are random character generation and selecting pregens. A more accurate metaphor would be buying a car that's already different than all the rest, but you don't see how until you open the package.

If random generation were more a process of customization, then I see how it's different, but most such systems make far too many choices for you to be any different than just selecting a pregen (or archetype) and modifying it, which is basically what the folks in your example are doing regarding those cars.

Quote from: John Morrow;542043As for the typical presentation of pregenerated characters, games generally provide so much information with the character that there is little room for personalization or customization.

I agree, and it's flat out bad design most of the time.

However, this is exactly what happens at most murder mystery dinners, and yet I've never had a problem making my character my own. YMMV.

Quote from: John Morrow;542043...and people who want to be surprised by what the results produced by the rules.

I rarely find character generators to be surprising or interesting. I'd certainly use them if they were.

Quote0_o

How did that in any way sound like 4e? Cause from what little experience I have with it its the exact opposite.

Hah! I reread your post more carefully this time. I was on a phone last time and I saw the words "character balance" and that you don't prefer random roll generation and misread the actual intention of the post. I apologize.

Went so far as to blog about this stuff, actually...

I have very little sympathy for his arguments. They boil down to "I don't like to make characters anymore because I've already done it all. So nobody will be able to make exactly the character they want in my games because I don't like that anymore." Yes, there will be some who agree with him, and those folks will like his future games. The rest of us will keep our slide rules handy and play some Champions just to spite him.

Quote from: BlazFeem;546915Went so far as to blog about this stuff, actually...
 
I have very little sympathy for his arguments. They boil down to "I don't like to make characters anymore because I've already done it all. So nobody will be able to make exactly the character they want in my games because I don't like that anymore." Yes, there will be some who agree with him, and those folks will like his future games. The rest of us will keep our slide rules handy and play some Champions just to spite him.

I find that I agree with the vast majority of that blog post.

Monte Cook: I don't like making characters so I won't let any of my players make their own characters anymore.

Me: Who the hell is Monte Cook besides someone I won't ever let be a GM for me?