In another thread, I said:
QuoteOne of the big eye-openers for me in my recent time as a GM was running the Legion campaign. In this campaign; I essentially told each of my players which superhero they were playing, what his origin was, what his personality was basically like. In other words, I broke all the supposed "regular role" rules about the stuff players are supposed to get to decide. I was quite nervous about doing so, but it was a special campaign where the idea was to closely emulate the style of the Legion comic, and this was the only way I felt the game would work.
And as it turned out, my players LOVED it. They loved the structure that this gave them, and the ability to make the superhero their own, with their own characteristics and emphasis WITHIN the boundaries of the traditional hero's profile. It was kind of like taking an existing character (say, James Bond, Dr.Who, Captain Kirk, whatever) and giving it to a new actor. He had to follow the context of that character, but he also could try to make it his own within the boundaries of that recognized character.
And the real shocker, the thing that makes me think this could work beyond just something like the Legion, is that many of the players had never read a single legion comic in their life; they had no idea of the character's personality beyond what I'd told them about, and yet they still managed to play the character in such a way that I could say it was undeniably true (this was the case with Ultra Boy, Chameleon Boy, Timber Wolf, and Tyroc; while the character playing Invisible Kid had relatively little prior experience with the character, the guy playing Wildfire only moderately so; and the ones playing Colossal Boy and Sun Boy had more extensive familiarity- but ALL of them managed to both play the character in a way that was recognizeably that character, and also their own interpretation of it).
This, to me, is something revolutionary. Its something that bears more exploration.
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 ran a Kult game several years back using this method. All the character were premade specially for each player.
See every player has their little quirks and most have their role they always fall into no matter what. So to go against this a little bit I made the pregens go against that. They had a blast with it and reached a little bit further into the roleplaying part than normal.
Gave a pacifist to the usual combat monger. The guy who always makes the weirdest characters got a gas station attendant. Also had a married religious couple going on mission. A road test driver for Saturn. Writer for a popular series of childrens books.
Nothing out of the ordinary. Only one of them had a gun and that was the gas station attendant. It was under the counter at the station where he worked midnights in a normally lonely stretch of Kansas interstate.
My story y'all.
Quote from: RPGPunditDoes anyone else have a similar experience, where the characters weren't created in the traditional way, but were assigned?
Never went that far. I have experimented with asking the players to design 3 characters and then having the GM pick which of the three characters each player gets to play. That worked pretty well.
I had a GM who did that once. I hated it. My character was supposed to have some significance in relation to the setting, but damned if I could tell what it was. All I knew was that my character totally sucked up front in comparison to the other GM-assigned characters.
!i!
Our 1st DM assigned characters to us (with names like Sine, Cos and Tan). I got the STR:18, CON:16, INT:3 human fighter*. He wanted to have a balanced party and I suppose we made the characters ours so we didn't mind. It works better for competition dungeons/games where the scenario requires certain roles and relationships.
*the next character he gave me was an evil hobbit with a switchblade hidden in a feather duster.
In a Cyberpunk2020 forum game once, the GM asked me to take on a particular character for a bit part - I got a name, rough description and job function, and I fleshed out the rest. Basically I took on an NPC on behalf of the GM, and that NPC became a proper PC. I loved it, the exact character concept wasnt one I'd have normally dreamed up.
I'm not sure it directly counts, but in my current tabletop group, 3 of the current players have taken over characters left behind by 3 of the last players.
Quote from: RPGPunditI'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?
Quite very similar. Though my players usually like to create their own PCs, they've enjoyed a lot of this stuff. Sometimes they welcome it as a challenge, so they don't become stale.
Quote from: RPGPunditDoes anyone else have a similar experience, where the characters weren't created in the traditional way, but were assigned?
Kind of. In my A|State campaign the PCs were all amnesiacs (they'd done it to themselves for good reasons, but naturally the device they needed to restore their memories got lost...). I asked the players to come up with stats and personalities for their characters, and I came up with the backgrounds. If the players were up for it, these would occasionally be quite dark - the mad mathematician-hacker turned out to be a serial killer (whose apprentice was continuing her work in her absence), and the rich corporate executive type with the sniper rifle was a high-paid independent assassin - and I made it clear early on in the campaign that it was always possible that losing their memories caused a shift in their personalities which might remain even if they got their memories back, so they didn't have to feel bound to revert to their old selves if they found out they didn't like their old selves.
It worked a treat.
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?
RPGPundit
Yep. That's what I did when I started a new Wilderlands campaign and I wanted to show the variety and scope of the setting. I made up a bunch of PCs from different parts of the setting, wrote up their backgrounds, and handed them out. The players loved it. Most of them said the backgrounds were better than whatever they would have come up, and they appreciated that the it gave them a head start on defining the PC's role in the group and the setting.
Quote from: RPGPunditI'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?
I did, back in ... '85?
I handed my players a bunch of characters named Tanis, Raistlin, Caramon, Sturm, Tika, Flint, (etc.) whose backstories and personalities were heavily intertwined with the adventure modules I intended to run...
...
...
...what?
(The result was that my players just didn't want to play pregenerated characters (apart from one guy who chose Tanis) and I had to DM the campaign with a completely different set of "innfellows" (among which were one barbarian shaman, one dark elf, one rich-merchant's-son-gone-illusionist,...), making for a completely different story than the official one.)
Its 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
It's all about trust, isn't it?
I always create a batch of pre-gens and let the players fight over them when I do stuff like this for one-shots.
In my campaign, I have a few players who just have me create pre-gens for them because they don't really like spending the time to create a character on their own.
My Exalted campaign started out by using the pregenerated characters in the demo adventure, so it was almost like what you're describing. The only difference is that I didn't say "you're playing Morning Breeze, and you play Naria." Instead the players looked at the available PCs and picked the ones they wanted.
From a player standpoint, that's also how I prefer it. I don't mind pregenned characters, as long as there's a little choice involved. Heck, some days I'd rather have a pregen than have to roll one up. If there's somethingi n the character I can wrap my head around, I'm happy.
Quote from: JongWKIt's all about trust, isn't it?
Well, the flip side of trust is the ability to deliver. While the players have to trust the GM to give them characters they'll enjoy playing, if the GM doesn't actually deliver and give the players characters that they'll enjoy playing, then their trust isn't deserved, is it?
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.