Quote from: The Traveller;685306Most games don't come up with much more than a list of stats and send you on your merry way, there's no effort to fill out a character with history and you know, character, and encourage roleplaying from that springboard, so players end up overly focused on mechanics, rules, and min-maxing.

Some games do try to go further but have no clear idea how to do that, and end up being very messy or requiring heavy suspension of disbelief. I include recent games in that category as well (although older games using things like CoC's insanity system obviously do write down more than the combat stats).

I subsequently linked to my own system under development which attempts to create a cohesive and compelling character as a fleshed out person, do go check it out.

I employ a similar ideal in my main game.  There are a few mechanisms that help flesh it out.

And to an earlier point, we roll the stats in order, then roll race and sub race.  Then we roll height, weight, age, max age, Base social level, and specific social level, and these rolls are all modified by the race roll.

We then make 5 rolls on what we call the Social Acquisition Chart (which is modified by the Social level), and they choose the guilds and organizations that complete their skills and also their fit in the culture of the area.

Here is an example written by one of the players for the Steel Isle Online game I ran online for 160 sessions.  

Does it fit every game and every style?  No.  I don't pretend it does.  Does it fit my social-heavy games?  Yes.

Quote from: LordVreeg;685417Here is an example written by one of the players for the Steel Isle Online game I ran online for 160 sessions.  

Does it fit every game and every style?  No.  I don't pretend it does.  Does it fit my social-heavy games?  Yes.

That's better than most, but it still doesn't tell me who the character is. Are they cranky? Obsessive? Friendly? Sly? My recent experiments with these sorts of traits combined with a lifepath system which associates their acquisition with actual events in the character's life (which may themselves be associated with world events) have been very rewarding. Plus I can now run things like PTSD and the effects of horror without needing any heavy lifting in the mechanics.

Quote from: The Traveller;685418That's better than most, but it still doesn't tell me who the character is. Are they cranky? Obsessive? Friendly? Sly? My recent experiments with these sorts of traits combined with a lifepath system which associates their acquisition with actual events in the character's life (which may themselves be associated with world events) have been very rewarding. Plus I can now run things like PTSD and the effects of horror without needing any heavy lifting in the mechanics.

Yeah, we toyed with adding personal characteristics based on the five factor/Big five trait theory, but the players rebelled against it/did not like it.
I like that you take these traits and combine them in a lifepath, but my players, pretty much to a man, did not want personality traits as part of the generation.  

But that was my people, your mileage may vary....  

Quote from: LordVreeg;685421Yeah, we toyed with adding personal characteristics based on the five factor/Big five trait theory, but the players rebelled against it/did not like it.

I just did up a big list of a hundred traits, 50 positive, 50 negative, quite likely a few important ones were missed but there's plenty more to go round. The aim isn't to build a psych profile, just to give a few guidelines as to who this character is.

It was a bit of a problem in my games, players were just focusing on their stats with little enough attention paid to embodying individual characterisations and unique personalities - partly because there was nothing to work from, so a lot of characters just became variations on 'wise, the wizard', or 'gruff the warrior'. Some players had no difficulty but it really helped others to be able to look at their sheet and say, okay, what would a crafty person do here.

Now of course I have a different problem, they're getting too attached to their fleshed out characters and it's a shade too easy to die in my games.

Quote from: LordVreeg;685421I like that you take these traits and combine them in a lifepath, but my players, pretty much to a man, did not want personality traits as part of the generation.  

But that was my people, your mileage may vary....  

Indeed. There aren't any penalties for not playing up to your traits mind you, nor do traits have any mechanical effect. It's just recommended and I'm starting to think they should be at the top of the character sheet front and centre. Even in chargen, players can pick positive traits and buy out of negative traits if they want.

Nobody does that though as even negative traits aren't neccessarily bad in adventuring terms, the angry loner archetype for example (Wolverine etc). I haven't yet had someone voluntarily choose a negative trait but it's coming.

Quote from: jedimastert;684992Could this have been caused by the disparity between that picture you posted and how older games actually generated PCs?

I mean if the lady in the picture is dreaming up a butt-kicking warrior in shining armor, and then has to roll 3d6 for stats straight down the row (or even 4d6 drop the lowest), there is no guarantee that she will be able to play what she envisions.

... Older D&D type games don't really allow you to ensure you get the character you want. If the lady in the picture sat down to a Basic or AD&D game and said she wanted to play a physically strong, wise, and attractive warrior before rolling her random ability scores she may be told she has to let the dice fall where they may.

First, the "roll up" approach to character generation is intended to precede the envisioning. One might prefer to go the other way about, but let us be as honest about actual historical expectations and practices as we would be about for instance the fact that in playing Chess or Bridge one does not normally expect to be able to pick a set of pieces or hand of cards to suit a preconceived strategy! One might well prefer to play DYO Squad Leader, but why misrepresent the correspondence of the other games to the domain of players for whom they were created, and who continue to enjoy them?

It is simplicity itself to assign ability scores however one pleases. That obviously calls for no great corpus of rules. What does call for a points system or similar is a particular kind of game balance. What calls for great volumes of rules is the desire to specify great masses of particular detail in terms of such a formalism.

Second, rolled scores are not much of an issue using the original D&D set. They indicate relative strengths, not the quantified span from 'helpless' to 'godlike' that started to appear in the supplements and was baked-in with AD&D. So, it's a problem that came in early but was not from the start as severe as it has become.

QuoteI think the spreadsheets, feats, daily powers, etc. in newer games are an over reaction to that lady in your picture being told "sorry you can't have that character you were dreaming of".

No doubt that is part of it. However, it is in fact the very purpose of such contrivances to limit the characters that are possible by the rules! This is most evident in the constraints not only on initial state, but on the possibilities that remain open depending upon that choice.

In older games, one really had a chance in the long run to turn any initial set of stats into any character one might conceive. In newer games, one tends to trade away that possibility in return for greater certainty in choosing from an initial menu. That menu itself is likely to be more restrictive, since so much of the rules is devoted to saying, "You can't do that because you have not bought Skill X, Feat Y, etc.." The basic assumption has gone from whatever is not prohibited is permitted to whatever is not permitted is prohibited.

It was quickly evident that the main trend in the field of RPG rules sets was toward ever greater elaboration. The concerns of Simbalist and Backhaus when they created Chivalry & Sorcery, Hargrave with his Arduin Grimoire, and so on, were not much with the kind of game balance that is the signal preoccupation today. Rather, what they were after was primarily more detail for detail's own sake in such areas as interested them.  

We might call one a 'gamer' focus, the other a 'simulator' focus (using those terms in more conventional ways than Forge-speak).

Most gamers either come up with a concept and build it or roll a character and play it. I've never actually met anyone that used a spreadsheet or a mug of coffe to make a character.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;685412And how is that different from any other edition of D&D?  Players create characters (using rules) and the DM populates the world with monsters (usually from books - sometimes their own unique creations) and the players try to overcome those challenges.  Even the most sand-box style game has 'overcome challenges' as part of the play.

The difference is that in pre-WotC D&D, the players had no means or motive to engage in char op between sessions by adding bits and pieces, feats, and multi-classes, from commercial products that were written for that purpose. You picked a race, picked a class, assigned some stats. Character done. The rest of the challenge is in the gameplay. With WotC, the challenge and the metagame (for a lot of players) happened away from the table. That was new, and it changed the game. Throw the word 'character build' out to an old-schooler who doesn't read forums, and he'll have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;685412What you call deck-building, I call 'options'.  Options can make a game more interesting.  Everyone, including you, agrees with that.  The game wouldn't be as interesting if 'Fighter' were the only choice for class.  Having fighters and wizards and rogues and humans and elves and dwarves all make for more options and a more interesting game.  We might disagree on how many options is too many, and we might disagree when an option is inappropriate (can a ninja exist in a medieval Europe style game) - but to a point, options are good.  

Optimizing is more than options. It's options with the knowledge that some of the synergies from those options can lead to characters that are far more powerful than non-optimized characters. If it was simply a matter of options, I would expect the fans of 3.x to be happy if there was a menu of 70 or 80 different character options, all equally powerful, that they could choose from. But I suspect that would not make them happy. The potential to try to break the game and create an uber-character is what drives a lot of the char op crowd. And again, that was new with WotC D&D because it simply wasn't possible earlier.

And you're being deliberately obtuse if you don't think it occurred to the company that made a fortune off M:tG that selling away-from-the-table optimization options to players could be a way to make a lot of money.

Quote from: beejazz;685434I've never actually met anyone that used a spreadsheet or a mug of coffe to make a character.

The spreadsheet is nothing but a tool for keeping track of the numbers.

 I've never used a spreadsheet to track a character's stats - games with that level of complexity don't appeal to me - but I have, and do, use them for things like tracking character finances, such as a Traveller merchant's trading or the income, investments, and taxes of our Flashing Blades characters.

I see an advantage, relative to the approach in WotC's D&D editions, in points systems such as Champions and GURPS. One can write up anything by the books and get a points total, but what attention one pays to that is a matter of choice. By contrast, the assessment value of the 'build' rules in WotC-D&D and similar systems is limited to a comparatively small universe of possibilities. This is because so many assumptions, so much of the rationales and maths behind the newer rules, is hidden rather than stated explicitly and discretely (as in the Champions style).

Quote from: Black Vulmea;685132(I)t also bears noting that in most roleplaying games, even with a random creation, you still have the opportunity to improve that character over time, with increasing skill and ability scores, class selection, or gear.

And much more! This is what I meant in my saying earlier (having especially in mind OD&D) that the whole universe of possible figures is potentially open regardless of initial stats. Even species is not set in stone in a multiverse not only of published rules for wishes, reincarnations and such, but even of "GM specials" and player-created magics.

The latter are given short shrift in the recent fetish for limiting options to officially published ones. Moreover, they depend on outcomes of actual play rather than out-of-play poring over rulebooks.

Quote from: Benoist;685145The real problem becomes when the rules themselves become the game. The rules are not the game, nor the game the rules.

I agree, in terms what appeals to me about RPGs. There seems to be a significant portion of the hobby, though, who would say that we have it backwards. It is a fine thing when someone is able to come up with a rules set that can please a large overlapping set of both factions, but in the event it is the character of the game as played in a particular group that determines suitability for me or someone else.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;684975and perhaps I just need to accept that the hobby is moving past me.  For example, when I think of character generation, I approach it something like this:

Quick, someone make a comment about her sexist, objectifying boobplate or the world won't make sense!

Quote from: Nexus;685443Quick, someone make a comment about her sexist, objectifying boobplate or the world won't make sense!

She has nice tits.

Quote from: beejazz;685434I've never actually met anyone that used a spreadsheet or a mug of coffee to make a character.

Great Googly-Moogly!

Without coffee, life isn't worth living! Of course you must use it to make characters!

Quote from: One Horse Town;685084Well, without having a concept in mind you'll have trouble spending your points.

Analysis paralysis.

This is so true.