I played Champions at a local convention as a wee nipper many ages ago.  We 'fought' over the various pregen characters (you know them if you've ever owned champions) and I got 'stuck' with the iron man dude (Champion? Defender? Yeah... Defender) who, I thought, sucked at combat with no real blast powers.

Despite the GM being the worst sort of 'read the module aloud' GM I've ever played with I had a blast... eventually... and even got second place for RPing (damn the fool with the Aussie Accent. No RPing other than that damn accent... I kid, he was cool.), partly because I was able to figure out what the module told us my character would do with the Mcguffin all by my lonesome.

But it could have gone much much worse.  Defender was my third choice, after that was a wasteland of characters I had no desire to play at all. At least Iron Man I could 'get'... emo psychic chick? No thanks.

To be honest, it was fine for a one shot, but it takes me longer to 'get' the character than one of my own, and god forbid there is a body of canon lore on how the character should be portrayed. My characters tend to evolve, and being told 'no, he'd never do that' is a phrase garaunteed to make me walk away from the game.

Quote from: RPGPunditIn another thread, I said:



Does anyone else have a similar experience, where the characters weren't created in the traditional way, but were assigned?
I'm not talking about just giving premade character stats to someone, like you might for a demo game or at a con; I'm talking about giving a player the character's background and some/all of his personality (whether the characters is a "famous" character, ie. an established superhero or literary character; or one of your own making)? Was the result of your game the same as mine?

RPGPundit

I used to run Firefly games where folks would play the actual characters from the show and they LOVED it.  The whole idea of playing a role rather than developing one was appealing, I guess.

I ran an Exalted game once that was a take on Hamlet; everyone knew what was expected of their character in terms of interaction and that went great.  The players loved it when we got a hugely epic, tragic ending.

I can't imagine doing this outside of established characters, though.  Making up the characters complete with personalities and then passing them out to players amounts to mental masturbation.  That's not an rpg, that's the GM's failed attempt at writing a novel.

Quote from: Ian NobleI used to run Firefly games where folks would play the actual characters from the show and they LOVED it.  The whole idea of playing a role rather than developing one was appealing, I guess.

I ran an Exalted game once that was a take on Hamlet; everyone knew what was expected of their character in terms of interaction and that went great.  The players loved it when we got a hugely epic, tragic ending.

I can't imagine doing this outside of established characters, though.  Making up the characters complete with personalities and then passing them out to players amounts to mental masturbation.  That's not an rpg, that's the GM's failed attempt at writing a novel.

Yes, that's certainly a consideration. I think that if you did it with a regular campaign with "nonestablished" characters, you'd have to make the guidelines much more general and leave much more room for personalization.
But really, how much different would it be to have the GM assign certain background elements than to have players roll them randomly in some kind of "lifepath chart" or "prior events tables" like many regular RPGs have?

RPGPundit

Actually, yes. My current Vampire the Requiem game was built like that. All I did was ask my players how, were they a Vampire, would they live out their Requiems: though ruling like a Lord, skulking like a 'bump in the night', absolute terror, living like the beautiful people or as a beast hunting its prey? After that simple question I told my players what Clan they were playing and guided them, somewhat heavy-handed, through character generation since I wanted them to be challenged, not just RP what they're used to.

I've found that situations like this really bring out the roleplayer in even the most inexperienced player. I realized this when I started running Hackmaster and players got stuck with Quirks and Flaws they wouldn't normally give their characters (everyone wants their guy to be the 'awesome dude[ette]') and then Aces and Eights did the same. It's harder with White Wolf's games because there's nothing random in character generation, so I went with assigning Clans and Covenants (think Vampiric ethnicity and philosophy, I suppose).

My players love it. My girlfriend actually asked me to do this with her next character too since she notices that she comes in to her own as far as roleplaying is concerned when she doesn't play what she wants to play but rather what she has to play.

-=Grim=-

I've GMed a couple of sessions within an ongoing campaign like that. There was a regional Wizards meeting (in Ars Magica) so one player played his own character and the players played NPC wizards. They liked it a bit too much. They played hardball, and the PC ended up getting bullied into some very raw deals. Funny thing was, once the PC got back home and told what happened the other players (now as PC's) were furious with him! And then after the game, the other players (as themselves) were still mad at him!

Outside of that, I've only had one pre-gen with a good backstory. It was fun in the same way that playing a random character is fun, you don't have to take responsibility for all the weird choices on the character sheet.

I ran an AFMBE game set on a German U-Boat. I had pre built the characters, their backrounds and within that established some of their previous relationship with other PC's. A few of whom had a secret (like having a crush on a crewmate, or the Kommandant...who smuggled his wife aboard.) and I'd pull the players of those charcters aside and fill them in before the game started.

I designed the characters to appeal to specific players...however I let my players pick their characters freely. They all picked the characters how I had designed them.

It was probably the most immersive game I've ever run. The players were truly tense and fearful. They all played very in character.

My mid-nineties D&D campaign featured one PC who was present for every session I ran.  That character had begun life as a pregen I made for a oneshot.  I partially attribute Doctor Phostarius working out so well to the fact that I tailor made the character to fit the personality and preferences of the player.  But at the time I was just making a cool PC for a one time deal, the fact that the good doctor became the centerpiece of a campaign happened almost by accident.

Quote from: RPGPunditIts starting to sound like from the responses, we can figure out that one major issue with this kind of method is that the GM must be careful to assign a character that the player will have some kind of affinity for; meaning he must already be familiar with that player and his likes.

Aside from that, it certainly seems to put the lie to the whole "players need empowerment" bullshit.

RPGPundit

I don't think player empowerment has anything to do with who made the character, rather it's about whether the player has meaningful choices to make in game.

I strongly suspect your games are ones that empower the players, and it's the phrase that's causing you issues.

Anyway, I have given people characters, it can work fine and for a game folk are unfamliar with can save a ton of time.  Often I let people choose from the pregens, though I have also sometimes had folk draw at random (but then we use random chargen a lot anyway).

I would typically expect a pregen to come with some degree of predetermined personality, and possibly some history, but to be honest I don't much care for backstory whoever is writing it so that doesn't come up much.