Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860247Otherwise, you just have to tell them "no" unless the other players are all OK with being Fred and Ethel.

"Lucy I'm home!"

Even Ricky is a sidekick.

Of course there is a fourth option -- everybody is weird. But some of us don't really want to turn every game into Superheroes or Metamorphosis Alpha (the good version).

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;860136We appear to have different table experiences. I've rarely seen a two-page background write-up that was worth the time put into it. One or two sentences were usually enough, and the less Mary Sue elements the better.

I don't do two-page background write-ups. Why does every discussion about a player who can actually be bothered to think about their PC before the game starts immediately leap to reams of prose?

Here's what I wrote for my Mass Effect character before the game started:

Spoiler

Origins

• Born on Aegis (Attican Beta/Odysseus System/fifth planet) in 2158.
•    Military family; grandfather Hector (Captain - retired), father Julius (Ops Chief - honourably discharged), uncle Alejandro (Gunnery Chief - KIA) and aunt Susana (Staff Commander - active) all served in First Contact War.
•    Mother Ariel is a geologist originally from Aegis. It was her idea to combine her talents with Julius to found their firm.
•    Killed a batarian raider when he was 15.
•    Father opposed joining military, in spite of his own service and setting up a mining business using technical skills the Alliance taught him.
•    Enlisted at 18 just after the Skyllian Blitz in 2176 (wasn't old enough to sign up before then).
•    Older sister Helen signed on to an explorator/prospecting crew and is the XO aboard the MSV Jules Verne.
•    Younger brother Isaac has fallen under the sway of the Terran Defense League, a "pro-human rights" group (read: supremacist militia) in the Skyllian Verge

Military History

• Served in a Marine Recon unit attached to the 4th Frontier Division, fighting pirates and slavers, as well as the odd batarian privateer.
•    Was part of the operation on Torfan in 2178, under Lieutenant Kessler; Kessler got half the company killed and himself mortally wounded. Ortiz managed to salvage the situation and intended to bring the Lt out to be court-martialled for his actions. However Kessler died before they were evacuated, and his influential family applied pressure on the survivors to change their stories.
•    After the operation Ortiz was commissioned 2nd Lt (a letter of recommendation for OCS from Kessler was "discovered" amongst his files) and given a medal for his actions. He spent the rest of 2178 and the early part of 2179 in Officer Cadet School studying and training to be an officer.
•    The remains of his company was split up and reassigned, sworn to secrecy about what happened on Torfan (and all were compensated in various ways to purchase their silence). It only took one "accidental death" of someone threatening to talk to make them realise the necessity of this. No one has really talked since then.
•    While they've all tried to forget it, Ortiz is something of a minor celebrity because of his actions, one of the few "good news stories" they were able to salvage from a thoroughly brutal and unforgiving operation.
•    As a result of his actions on Torfan and following his time in OCS, he was sent to the Interplanetary Combatives Academy in late 2179, passing the N1 course.
•    Was wounded in 2180, spending several months recovering while they grew him a graft-replacement for his injured hand.
•    Resigned his commission in 2181 when the term of his original enlistment was up.

Extra-military history

• Went to Nguye's graduation ceremony from the Grissom Academy in early 2178, where he was introduced to Sam.
•    While on shore leave on Illium in 2180, ran into an Eclipse enforcer and her Blue Suns trouble. Started the night in fatigues with his sidearm, ended it with his appropriated Blue Suns armour and assault rifle on the floor of her apartment. Hasn't seen her since and she never did tell him her name.
•    The man who gave up his armour and weapon was a well-connected Centurion called Cedric Drase. His older brother Louis is chief amongst those who swore vengeance on Ortiz for his death.
•    Kessler was related to the family running Hahne-Kedar; they haven't ended their surveillance and monitoring of Ortiz just because he's no longer in service. One of their venture capital subsidiaries is an investor in Penumbra for this very reason.
•    Went to Omega (to the annual "mercenary's fair") after his discharge to find his asari assignation of the year before. Instead he ran into Sam, their mutual friend Nguye and more Blue Suns trouble. The three of them managed to escape leaving a half-dozen mercs dead and firmly placing them on the Blue Suns shit-list. Nguye still joined Eclipse as a freelancer despite Sam and Russell trying to dissuade him.

No purple prose, no pre-game wish-fulfilment or attempts at self-aggrandisement or wheedling extras out of the GM. It's a process that helps me work out where my character came from, who they are and how they connect to the game world. All vital stuff in orienting them for the game, so they don't start out a blank page where we pluck details out of the air (and likely forget them moments later) as we go.

One or two sentences isn't worth the paper it's written on, something that brief is little better than noting the basic concept verbalised when someone asked you what your idea for a character was. If someone is willing to invest so little effort in thinking about their character before the game, why should we trust they'll be willing to do any more than that during?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;860136Personality, quirks, goals - the ones that matter will emerge naturally in play, and player stand-ins don't bother me much.

I find they emerge much more naturally when you start the game with an idea of where they came from. Rather than just conjuring them out of the aether. I also find inter-relationships between the PCs are much more believable when they've been discussed beforehand.

There's nothing worse than those really tedious, stilted "introduction" scenes some groups insist on boring everyone with, where the game opens with the PCs all meeting for the first time.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;860136You know that advice they give writers? "Is the story you are planning to tell the most interesting period of your character's life? If it isn't, what is? Why aren't you telling us about that period instead?"

Roleplaying games aren't writing.

But to address this point, rare is the author who knows absolutely nothing about the character they are writing before they start to write about them. Everyone comes from somewhere, those experiences shape them, that's the whole point of having a background.

There's a big difference between including the character's background in the story and putting something together as part of your preparatory work before you actually sit down to write them. Writing a background is preparatory work, not play.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;860136To me, the campaign is the most interesting period of the character's life, the part where we really discover who they are, where they develop their most unique features in appropriate response to the circumstances.

Without the context of what has come before, the "most interesting period" of a character's life is rather empty and meaningless. No one comes into a situation completely unformed by their past and experiences. It's entirely artificial and leads to unbelievable characters.

It's often little more than the player's own instinctive responses to what is happening until enough time has passed for them to develop their own distinctive voice separate from the player's wishes. Assuming that ever happens, of course. Some players never move beyond their PCs as avatars.

Uh, Kiero, that's like a page just in bullet points. That's like countering that "it's merely 1.5 pages, in 10 pt. font, so there." Just because you cannot condense, let alone refrain from straddling heavily into the GM's role of world building, doesn't mean you're not that type of problem player.

Quote from: Opaopajr;860275Uh, Kiero, that's like a page just in bullet points. That's like countering that "it's merely 1.5 pages, in 10 pt. font, so there." Just because you cannot condense, let alone refrain from straddling heavily into the GM's role of world building, doesn't mean you're not that type of problem player.

It's important points picked out, in an easily-digestible format. It isn't prose which takes effort to read and analyse for the things that matter. Most of them are just establishing facts to pin things down.

I'd hardly call your own character's background, and how they are connected with the world "straddling heavily in the GM's role of world building". Especially not in this instance where it's a pre-existing, licensed property that has largely been created by someone else. In broad strokes at the least.

This all comes down to personal style. In a rare case of game theory jargon actually being easy to understand and useful in describing an aspect of play, what we're seeing here is a clash between the "develop at start" style - Kiero's whole deal where he finds that he needs to put a lot of thought into a character's past before he can really inhabit them - and the "develop in play" style, where after starting from a fairly bare-bones outline a character's particular personality and quirks and outlook becomes more and more defined and distinctive as play progresses.

Both styles are absolutely fine as far as I'm concerned. It's very true that gaming isn't writing, and that means that your character doesn't need to be well-defined and well-realised straight out of the gate; taking some time to get them up to speed is absolutely fine, particularly since it usually takes a little time for a campaign to really start purring like a finely-tuned engine anyway. Similarly, if a player needs to write a bunch of notes to get into character then that's fine, because ultimately that's a bunch of work they do themselves and doesn't necessarily have to add work for others.

You get trouble when these styles heavily clash, but I tend to find this is only a problem if people are being dogmatic about it. If the GM isn't willing to make provisions for the different styles, those who don't follow the GM's preferred style are going to have a hard time. If a player insists that everyone has to handle character development and preparation the same way they do, then that's going to cause friction. If it really, really, really bugs you that someone else has (or hasn't) written up a detailed background for your character, then when that happens you are going to be pissed off.

As always with these things, it comes down to a choice: either let it go and concentrate on your own fun rather than getting pissed at other people's fun, or reach a compromise where you can stop treading on each others' toes, or if you can't do either stop gaming with people whose styles are that incompatible with yours.

None of the above is difficult or complicated so there's no reason for people to get quite this emotive about the subject.

Quote from: Kiero;860269I don't do two-page background write-ups. Why does every discussion about a player who can actually be bothered to think about their PC before the game starts immediately leap to reams of prose?

Here's what I wrote for my Mass Effect character before the game started:
...

For my part, I was just looking at examples I've seen, and trying to connect to the question. I don't think the OP or I were trying to say that literally everyone who wants a weird character is a problem. Just that there is some sort of pattern, and the OP and I were both posting as curious questions and looking for more data and ideas. Not trying to create a stereotype to be prejudiced against in all cases.

Your background example in particular looks great and not weird, and shows that you have thought it through enough that you engaged with it when you wrote it, so it probably is going to end up something you will relate to and will add to your roleplaying that character during play. The things that I've seen tend to detract from immersion are added stuffs and abilities that are mainly just abilities that don't come with a coherent background, such as:

* Has two flaming +5 poisoning rapiers.
* Has psionic pyrokinetic abilities that can heat anything within 1000m by 100 degrees per second.
* Infravision 100'.
* Half-Drow-Elf but looks like a half-Wood-Elf (even though no known elves in game world).
* Female lecher tease (being played by 13-year old male who has no sisters and has not yet even met a horny female in real life).
* Were-jaguarundi (even though there are no jaguars or jaguarundis or were-anything in GM's world).

I'm still curious what the actual dynamics are. I think it's not about specific background length or even munchkin abilities or purple-haired elves per se, but about whether the player is going to immerse in the written details for a character, or whether in fact the details are going to create a barrier for the player's immersion (which does seem to be a thing that happens, and these are some possible clues rather than absolute causes).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860247In my experience a player who wants to break character generation constraints does so for one of three reasons.

The fourth type just has some "character" and wants to play it. This could be a favorite character of their own. Or could be something from a book or movie. Sometimes this can reach fetish or obsession levels. Usually not. Neither good nor necessarily bad on its own. But can be vexing for the DM to try and shoehorn Gandalf into Call of Cthulhu.

The fifth type has a style they gravitate to strongly. Sometimes very strongly. They always play mages, always play elves, etc. This is neither good nor bad on its own. But can be vexing for a DM when they want to play a magic user in Star Wars. but they can be outstanding in games that they fit into as they need often the least prep time and can slip into a character with ease.

These types dont want to be "special". They just want to play something they are familliar with or idealize.

Then theres the other types. So many.

Quote from: Warthur;860312This all comes down to personal style. In a rare case of game theory jargon actually being easy to understand and useful in describing an aspect of play, what we're seeing here is a clash between the "develop at start" style - Kiero's whole deal where he finds that he needs to put a lot of thought into a character's past before he can really inhabit them - and the "develop in play" style, where after starting from a fairly bare-bones outline a character's particular personality and quirks and outlook becomes more and more defined and distinctive as play progresses.

At the risk of delving into said theory, I don't really see a dichotomy between the approaches. For me "develop at start" facilitates "develop in play", it doesn't replace it. By coming up with that outline, I am better able to develop and add to it, rather than starting from nothing more than whatever the system requires to have a functional character. So it's not an either/or it's a both/and.

Quote from: Warthur;860312Both styles are absolutely fine as far as I'm concerned. It's very true that gaming isn't writing, and that means that your character doesn't need to be well-defined and well-realised straight out of the gate; taking some time to get them up to speed is absolutely fine, particularly since it usually takes a little time for a campaign to really start purring like a finely-tuned engine anyway. Similarly, if a player needs to write a bunch of notes to get into character then that's fine, because ultimately that's a bunch of work they do themselves and doesn't necessarily have to add work for others.

You get trouble when these styles heavily clash, but I tend to find this is only a problem if people are being dogmatic about it. If the GM isn't willing to make provisions for the different styles, those who don't follow the GM's preferred style are going to have a hard time. If a player insists that everyone has to handle character development and preparation the same way they do, then that's going to cause friction. If it really, really, really bugs you that someone else has (or hasn't) written up a detailed background for your character, then when that happens you are going to be pissed off.

As always with these things, it comes down to a choice: either let it go and concentrate on your own fun rather than getting pissed at other people's fun, or reach a compromise where you can stop treading on each others' toes, or if you can't do either stop gaming with people whose styles are that incompatible with yours.

None of the above is difficult or complicated so there's no reason for people to get quite this emotive about the subject.

All true. If my approach didn't work with the people I play with, I wouldn't still be playing with them seven years after joining up.

Quote from: Skarg;860317For my part, I was just looking at examples I've seen, and trying to connect to the question. I don't think the OP or I were trying to say that literally everyone who wants a weird character is a problem. Just that there is some sort of pattern, and the OP and I were both posting as curious questions and looking for more data and ideas. Not trying to create a stereotype to be prejudiced against in all cases.

Your background example in particular looks great and not weird, and shows that you have thought it through enough that you engaged with it when you wrote it, so it probably is going to end up something you will relate to and will add to your roleplaying that character during play. The things that I've seen tend to detract from immersion are added stuffs and abilities that are mainly just abilities that don't come with a coherent background, such as:

* Has two flaming +5 poisoning rapiers.
* Has psionic pyrokinetic abilities that can heat anything within 1000m by 100 degrees per second.
* Infravision 100'.
* Half-Drow-Elf but looks like a half-Wood-Elf (even though no known elves in game world).
* Female lecher tease (being played by 13-year old male who has no sisters and has not yet even met a horny female in real life).
* Were-jaguarundi (even though there are no jaguars or jaguarundis or were-anything in GM's world).

I'm still curious what the actual dynamics are. I think it's not about specific background length or even munchkin abilities or purple-haired elves per se, but about whether the player is going to immerse in the written details for a character, or whether in fact the details are going to create a barrier for the player's immersion (which does seem to be a thing that happens, and these are some possible clues rather than absolute causes).

Don't forget, I'm also a GM, though less frequently than I am a player. So I'm not looking to be that problematic special snowflake, but I'm also quite comfortable collaborating in the world-building.

I don't see that as solely the GM's preserve, not even (or perhaps especially) when I'm the GM. The game-world should be a shared thing that we all have a stake in, not the GM's private ball the players can only kick when they are allowed to.

Quote from: Omega;860321The fourth type just has some "character" and wants to play it. This could be a favorite character of their own. Or could be something from a book or movie. Sometimes this can reach fetish or obsession levels. Usually not. Neither good nor necessarily bad on its own. But can be vexing for the DM to try and shoehorn Gandalf into Call of Cthulhu.

The fifth type has a style they gravitate to strongly. Sometimes very strongly. They always play mages, always play elves, etc. This is neither good nor bad on its own. But can be vexing for a DM when they want to play a magic user in Star Wars. but they can be outstanding in games that they fit into as they need often the least prep time and can slip into a character with ease.

These types dont want to be "special". They just want to play something they are familliar with or idealize.

Then theres the other types. So many.

Yep, I gravitate towards the fifth a lot. I like playing mundane-but-skillful Badass Normals. Fortunately, there are very few games where it's difficult to accommodate, let alone problematic.

Quote from: Kiero;860269I don't do two-xage background write-ups.

Yeah you kind of do. I used a 10.5 pt Times New Roman font and to get what you wrote onto just one page (8.5"x11") I had to remove all spaces between lines except for a space between the three sections and I had to decrease the margins to 0.75" all around. And those 21 bullet points filled that one page.

Quote from: Kiero;860288It's important points picked out, in an easily-digestible format. It isn't prose which takes effort to read and analyse for the things that matter. Most of them are just establishing facts to pin things down.

It’s 21 bullet points, and six of them are three or more lines long. That’s not necessarily a problem. The question I have, as a player or a GM, is “How many of these 650+ words do I need to remember?” Speaking for myself, there is a lot in there and no obvious indication (other than a close reading and analysis of the text) whether any one bullet is more important than any other.

You used a chronological listing which is grouped by pre-military career, military career, and post military career. While that is a great way to do things for you the player (I’ve done the same for some of my PCs), I’ve learned it’s not a great way to organize stuff for other people, especially the GM. As a GM I want to easily pick out five or six categories of stuff from that background: Family, Friends/Allies, Enemies/Rivals, Key Events, and Significant Gear.

You have elements from each of those categories, but they aren’t clearly marked and they are intermixed and spread across multiple bullet points. You have all the family stuff in the first section, so that doesn’t need much, but a clear marking of the family members (bold, underline, italics, double underline, highlight, etc.) would help when the GM is reviewing to remember your uncle's name or your mom's career.

The friends/allies and enemies/rivals are spread across the remaining two sections. That makes it harder to connect the various bullets related to the Kessler family who seem like important enemies or adversaries you have created for Ortiz.

Which reminds me, what is Ortiz’s full name? You don’t actually say.

I’m guessing that Sam and Nguye are two other PCs which is why you don’t bother with their full names, but if not you should really include their full names. Here’s how I would annotate to make it easier for the GM.

Spoiler

Origins

• Born on Aegis (Attican Beta/Odysseus System/fifth planet) in 2158.
  
• Military family; grandfather Hector (Captain - retired), father Julius (Ops Chief - honourably discharged), uncle Alejandro (Gunnery Chief - KIA) and aunt Susana (Staff Commander - active) all served in First Contact War.
  
• Mother Ariel is a geologist originally from Aegis. It was her idea to combine her talents with Julius to found their firm.
  
• Killed a batarian raider when he was 15.
  
• Father opposed joining military, in spite of his own service and setting up a mining business using technical skills the Alliance taught him.
  
• Enlisted at 18 just after the Skyllian Blitz in 2176 (wasn't old enough to sign up before then).
• Older sister Helen signed on to an explorator/prospecting crew and is the XO aboard the MSV Jules Verne.
  
• Younger brother Isaac has fallen under the sway of the Terran Defense League, a "pro-human rights" group (read: supremacist militia) in the Skyllian Verge
  

Military History   

• Served in a Marine Recon unit attached to the 4th Frontier Division, fighting pirates and slavers, as well as the odd batarian privateer
  
• Was part of the operation on Torfan in 2178, under Lieutenant Kessler; Kessler got half the company killed and himself mortally wounded. Ortiz managed to salvage the situation and intended to bring the Lt out to be court-martialled for his actions. However Kessler died before they were evacuated, and [strike]his[/strike] Kessler’s influential family applied pressure on the survivors to change their stories.
  
• After the operation Ortiz was commissioned 2nd Lt (a letter of recommendation for OCS from Kessler was "discovered" amongst his files) and given a medal for his actions. He spent the rest of 2178 and the early part of 2179 in Officer Cadet School studying and training to be an officer.
  
• The remains of his company was split up and reassigned, sworn to secrecy about what happened on Torfan (and all were compensated in various ways to purchase their silence). It only took one "accidental death" of someone threatening to talk to make them realise the necessity of this. No one has really talked since then.
  
• While they've all tried to forget it, Ortiz is something of a minor celebrity because of his actions, one of the few "good news stories" they were able to salvage from a thoroughly brutal and unforgiving operation.
• As a result of his actions on Torfan and following his time in OCS, he was sent to the Interplanetary Combatives Academy in late 2179, passing the N1 course.
• Was wounded in 2180, spending several months recovering while they grew him a graft-replacement for his injured hand.
• Resigned his commission in 2181 when the term of his original enlistment was up.

Extra-military history

• Went to Nguye’s graduation ceremony from the Grissom Academy in early 2178, where he was introduced to Sam.
  
• While on shore leave on Illium in 2180, ran into an Eclipse enforcer and her Blue Suns trouble. Started the night in fatigues with his sidearm, ended it with his appropriated <> on the floor of her apartment. Hasn't seen her since and she never did tell him her name.
  
• The man who gave up his armour and weapon was a well-connected Centurion called Cedric Drase. His older brother Louis is chief amongst those who swore vengeance on Ortiz for his death.
  
• Kessler was related to the family running Hahne-Kedar; they haven't ended their surveillance and monitoring of Ortiz just because he's no longer in service. One of their venture capital subsidiaries is an investor in Penumbra for this very reason.
  
• Went to Omega (to the annual “mercenary’s fair”) after his discharge to find his asari assignation of the year before. Instead he ran into Sam, their mutual friend Nguye and more Blue Suns trouble. The three of them managed to escape leaving a half-dozen mercs dead and firmly placing them on the Blue Suns shit-list. Nguye still joined Eclipse as a freelancer despite Sam and Russell [IS THIS ORTIZ?] trying to dissuade him.
  

Italics for friends/allies doesn't stand out as well as underline, so I actually prefer single underline for friends and allies and double underline for enemies, but I can't do double underline here.

EDIT: Forgot to say, I like the background. It looks interesting, but it also looks like there is an expectation that some of this will be used by the GM in play. Now you probably have agreement from your GM to do just that, which is cool. But someone else showing up who just drops this in my lap and expects me use it without talking to me first is not making my GM job easier.

Quote from: Skarg;860317I'm still curious what the actual dynamics are. I think it's not about specific background length or even munchkin abilities or purple-haired elves per se, but about whether the player is going to immerse in the written details for a character, or whether in fact the details are going to create a barrier for the player's immersion (which does seem to be a thing that happens, and these are some possible clues rather than absolute causes).

For me, it is also about how much of the background the player expects anyone else to know, remember, and use.

As a GM, I want that to be “not too much,” “even less,” and “only what I want” or “only what I want and what is linked to system mechanics like a Contact, Enemy, or Hunted.”

And since I am all about people catering to me, I want it to be as easy as possible for me to quickly skim the player info to find the PC’s Family, Friends/Allies, Enemies/Rivals, Key Events, and Significant Gear. If you want the GM to use that background, then you need to write for that audience.

Quote from: Bren;860326Yeah you kind of do. I used a 10.5 pt Times New Roman font and to get what you wrote onto just one page (8.5"x11") I had to remove all spaces between lines except for a space between the three sections and I had to decrease the margins to 0.75" all around. And those 21 bullet points filled that one page.
It’s 21 bullet points, and six of them are three or more lines long. That’s not necessarily a problem. The question I have, as a player or a GM, is “How many of these 650+ words do I need to remember?” Speaking for myself, there is a lot in there and no obvious indication (other than a close reading and analysis of the text) whether any one bullet is more important than any other.

We have a campaign wiki - as indeed we do for almost all of our games - so this stuff doesn't have to be remembered. This game, perhaps because it's sci-fi, does seem to have generated a lot more contextual material than many of our other games. It's also much more detail-heavy - you might remember some of the very long threads we've had on here about how we might achieve things like assaulting a base.

Much of the content you see in the wiki has come about as a result of discussions (often quite lengthy ones) we've had about things like our ship, it's crew, how our mercenary company is set up and so on.

Quote from: Bren;860326You used a chronological listing which is grouped by pre-military career, military career, and post military career. While that is a great way to do things for you the player (I’ve done the same for some of my PCs), I’ve learned it’s not a great way to organize stuff for other people, especially the GM. As a GM I want to easily pick out five or six categories of stuff from that background: Family, Friends/Allies, Enemies/Rivals, Key Events, and Significant Gear.

Good point, it isn't necessarily easy to pick out those sorts of things without some work. I did deliberately leave it up to the GM to single out anything that interested him to light upon in-game.

Quote from: Bren;860326You have elements from each of those categories, but they aren’t clearly marked and they are intermixed and spread across multiple bullet points. You have all the family stuff in the first section, so that doesn’t need much, but a clear marking of the family members (bold, underline, italics, double underline, highlight, etc.) would help when the GM is reviewing to remember your uncle's name or your mom's career.

I always make pains to detail my PCs family - partly an aversion to the Loner Complex - but I leave it entirely up to the GM to use or not use them. It's putting them out there to be available if desired. I really don't like those moments in game of "so, uh, what's your character's sister called?"; this circumvents them.

But again, being on our wiki makes them easily accessible in-game if desired. The GM runs the game from a laptop, and we were often jumping onto the wiki to pick out a specific crewman or the like. The PCs now have two ships and two crews, so to preserve any sense of continuity (and our sanity) it all needs to be recorded in some fashion.

Quote from: Bren;860326The friends/allies and enemies/rivals are spread across the remaining two sections. That makes it harder to connect the various bullets related to the Kessler family who seem like important enemies or adversaries you have created for Ortiz.

Yep, the Kessler family is set up as a potential major adversary (but also a backer of the company...complications...), Drase is a one-off option. We'd discussed that.

Quote from: Bren;860326Which reminds me, what is Ortiz’s full name? You don’t actually say.

Russell - the detail is all in his Personnel File, but isn't on the bio. If you'd gotten as far as the bio on the wiki, you'll have read it already. There's a shed-load of names in the page about the Torfan incident too, again for potential mining if desired.

Quote from: Bren;860326I’m guessing that Sam and Nguye are two other PCs which is why you don’t bother with their full names, but if not you should really include their full names. Here’s how I would annotate to make it easier for the GM.

Spoiler

Origins

• Born on Aegis (Attican Beta/Odysseus System/fifth planet) in 2158.
  
• Military family; grandfather Hector (Captain - retired), father Julius (Ops Chief - honourably discharged), uncle Alejandro (Gunnery Chief - KIA) and aunt Susana (Staff Commander - active) all served in First Contact War.
  
• Mother Ariel is a geologist originally from Aegis. It was her idea to combine her talents with Julius to found their firm.
  
• Killed a batarian raider when he was 15.
  
• Father opposed joining military, in spite of his own service and setting up a mining business using technical skills the Alliance taught him.
  
• Enlisted at 18 just after the Skyllian Blitz in 2176 (wasn't old enough to sign up before then).
• Older sister Helen signed on to an explorator/prospecting crew and is the XO aboard the MSV Jules Verne.
  
• Younger brother Isaac has fallen under the sway of the Terran Defense League, a "pro-human rights" group (read: supremacist militia) in the Skyllian Verge
  

Military History   

• Served in a Marine Recon unit attached to the 4th Frontier Division, fighting pirates and slavers, as well as the odd batarian privateer
  
• Was part of the operation on Torfan in 2178, under Lieutenant Kessler; Kessler got half the company killed and himself mortally wounded. Ortiz managed to salvage the situation and intended to bring the Lt out to be court-martialled for his actions. However Kessler died before they were evacuated, and [strike]his[/strike] Kessler’s influential family applied pressure on the survivors to change their stories.
  
• After the operation Ortiz was commissioned 2nd Lt (a letter of recommendation for OCS from Kessler was "discovered" amongst his files) and given a medal for his actions. He spent the rest of 2178 and the early part of 2179 in Officer Cadet School studying and training to be an officer.
  
• The remains of his company was split up and reassigned, sworn to secrecy about what happened on Torfan (and all were compensated in various ways to purchase their silence). It only took one "accidental death" of someone threatening to talk to make them realise the necessity of this. No one has really talked since then.
  
• While they've all tried to forget it, Ortiz is something of a minor celebrity because of his actions, one of the few "good news stories" they were able to salvage from a thoroughly brutal and unforgiving operation.
• As a result of his actions on Torfan and following his time in OCS, he was sent to the Interplanetary Combatives Academy in late 2179, passing the N1 course.
• Was wounded in 2180, spending several months recovering while they grew him a graft-replacement for his injured hand.
• Resigned his commission in 2181 when the term of his original enlistment was up.

Extra-military history

• Went to Nguye’s graduation ceremony from the Grissom Academy in early 2178, where he was introduced to Sam.
  
• While on shore leave on Illium in 2180, ran into an Eclipse enforcer and her Blue Suns trouble. Started the night in fatigues with his sidearm, ended it with his appropriated <> on the floor of her apartment. Hasn't seen her since and she never did tell him her name.
  
• The man who gave up his armour and weapon was a well-connected Centurion called Cedric Drase. His older brother Louis is chief amongst those who swore vengeance on Ortiz for his death.
  
• Kessler was related to the family running Hahne-Kedar; they haven't ended their surveillance and monitoring of Ortiz just because he's no longer in service. One of their venture capital subsidiaries is an investor in Penumbra for this very reason.
  
• Went to Omega (to the annual “mercenary’s fair”) after his discharge to find his asari assignation of the year before. Instead he ran into Sam, their mutual friend Nguye and more Blue Suns trouble. The three of them managed to escape leaving a half-dozen mercs dead and firmly placing them on the Blue Suns shit-list. Nguye still joined Eclipse as a freelancer despite Sam and Russell [IS THIS ORTIZ?] trying to dissuade him.
  

Italics for friends/allies doesn't stand out as well as underline, so I actually prefer single underline for friends and allies and double underline for enemies, but I can't do double underline here.

Sam is a PC, Pete is a connecting character who joins Russell to Sam in the before-the-game space. Sam and Pete were at school together, and were involved. Pete served with Russell, and made an appearance later as a significant NPC. We nearly got him killed.

Again, they're details elsewhere on the wiki, which is why they weren't specifically included there.

Quote from: Bren;860326EDIT: Forgot to say, I like the background. It looks interesting, but it also looks like there is an expectation that some of this will be used by the GM in play. Now you probably have agreement from your GM to do just that, which is cool. But someone else showing up who just drops this in my lap and expects me use it without talking to me first is not making my GM job easier.

Indeed, we as a group went through a lot of shared prep-work before the game started to make all this possible. Starting with the initial premise - we discussed a list of options the GM presented of what sort of game it might be, and went from there.

Quote from: Kiero;860355Indeed, we as a group went through a lot of shared prep-work before the game started to make all this possible. Starting with the initial premise - we discussed a list of options the GM presented of what sort of game it might be, and went from there.

I see shared prep as very different thing from a player shows up with a 2 page backstory created without any input from anyone else.

One nice thing about shared prep is it works well for creating a group of characters who each have a reason to be together or to work together. Another thing is it facilitates creating room for some intra-party friction without the friction being too frictional. Those two reasons have moved our group in the direction of shared preparation. The downside is it takes time to do group creation. And for some groups (ours is one) that equals time they don't get to play. And since some people really don't like planning and brainstorming sessions, those people would rather just start playing and figure that stuff out as the game goes. I've not found a way to really satisfy both kinds of players. If they play together someone ends up doing something they don't like very much.

Given that the character write up Kiero posted is for Mass Effect i see zero issue with that level of detailed background info as having played the videogames that's the kinda stuff you get asked at character creation anyway.

Quote from: Warthur;860015Heck, even samurai would be a better fit for Pendragon; there's enough parallels between knights and samurai in terms of both social position (both are mounted armoured warriors in a feudal system who loyally serve someone higher up the chain) and ethos (both aspire to embody the ideals of a code of honour, whether that be chivalry or bushido) that I could almost consider letting a player play a samurai who's come over to visit Arthur, particularly when you get towards the end of the Conquest Period where Camelot has become a world power. (They could fill the same niche as the occasional saracen knight who came over for much the same reason in Malory.)

My players probably won't do it though because they are too into their Salisbury knights' family trees. I might have some samurai turn up at Camlann to aid Arthur or something.

Well, a kunoichi might work... But for some reason, that's usually not what said players mean.

Quote from: EOTB;860019A lot of casual players just enjoy sitting down and playing a dwarf fighter.  

They already know how to play it

They enjoy playing it

They don't have the time nor inclination to learn the mechanics of another character type for whatever reason, because this one serves them perfectly well.

So, for a casual player, a campaign that is "thematically different" from, for ex, the D&D they grew up with is undesirable; they aren't jaded and looking for a new and improved roleplaying experience; they don't actually play RPGs as their primary hobby.  They are looking to enjoy some old familiar and reliable with their limited time.

And they can play it...in all games where there are dwarves that can be fighters.

Quote from: Skarg;860035Yes, I have seen such effects, though I am not sure exactly what the formula is. My guesses are something like:

I think it has to do with how well the player relates to their character in play. If they understand the character fully, including where they came from, why they are there, what interests them in the play situation, what their goals and fears etc are. It seems that for many players, that's much more easy to do for a new character when the character is simple and fits into the game world. It also seems like the mindset of fancy complex weird character abilities, or even just playing an experienced knowledgeable character who is completely new to the player, can be challenging to relate to.

For example, a player who hadn't "had time" to choose a character yet showed up, and I gave him a sheet for an otherwise-NPC average young sailor on the ship the party was on. He had as good a time as anyone in the group, perhaps better, and ended up involved in the middle of the intrigue, making suit on the ship's (NPC) princess passenger. The character's abilities were being young and fit and having swimming and sailing skills, mostly, a 25-point character in a group with 150-point PCs. Then unfortunately, the player made a character, who was a 150-point half-elf or something, with various spells and maybe some weird traits/abilities. The player kept showing up and enjoying the game, but only in a mostly generic uninvolved way, not really getting into his character or doing anything particularly interesting. I wish he'd stuck with the sailor.

I think it's generally a pitfall for systems and campaigns with lots of exotic choices for abilities and character types but no real integrated background. You can end up with a bunch of weirdo PCs who have no good reason to be in a group together or to all work on the same project, and whose players don't really identify with or fully understand the characters they're playing, because they were chosen for their weird qualities and powers and not because the player really relates to or understands the character.

On the other hand, I know players who I would expect to be able to play weird characters they come up with, as long as they seem suitably into the character and not just the abilities.

I think it's about relating to the person of the PC and their story and situation in the world, and things like "I want to be a were-jaguarundi" (true example) or "I want to start as a wizard with 40 spells I myself just read about for the first time" are big obstacles to that, as they're not very relatable and focus on abilities rather than the person.

Yes, this, especially the part in bold. That's why I tend to answer such requests with "I asked about the concept, not the mechanics" (except for the few games where the mechanics are well-integrated parts of the setting).

Quote from: The Butcher;860072I don't know whether this is relevant to your game -- Pendragon being, to the best of my knowledge, openly and unabashedly anachronistic -- but aren't Arthur and the samurai separated by something like a thousand years?

For that matter, Arthur is separated by the knights with a century and a half, too. So a samurai can work, unless the player just wanted to have an all-cutting katana:D!

Quote from: Spinachcat;860200The problem with RPGs is you have to play with living people and many living people suck.

That's no more a problem for games than for real life.
The problem is if you always play with the same player, and he sucks;).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;860247In my experience a player who wants to break character generation constraints does so for one of three reasons.

First, they may simply be contrary.  They don't want to play a gnome except that you said "there are no gnomes in this world."  If you said "everybody is a gnome" they'd want to play something else.  Basically, they're a dick.  Get rid of them.

Second, they may simply not be actually that interested in the concept but don't want (for some reason) to bow out of the game.  This person is more interested in socializing and not really interested in gaming.  Come up with nongaming social events.

The third type of player really wants to play, but insists on a character who is 'different.'  The problem with this in a group is that their different character, if you're playing the situation accurately, will attract more attention than the rest of the group put together.  Essentially, they've just reduced the other players to supporting actors in their story, usually without realizing it.  The solution to this is, if you have time, run them separately so their unique character can be the center of attention.  Otherwise, you just have to tell them "no" unless the other players are all OK with being Fred and Ethel.

That's good, but it's missing a couple types I've seen.

Quote from: Omega;860321The fourth type just has some "character" and wants to play it. This could be a favorite character of their own. Or could be something from a book or movie. Sometimes this can reach fetish or obsession levels. Usually not. Neither good nor necessarily bad on its own. But can be vexing for the DM to try and shoehorn Gandalf into Call of Cthulhu.

The fifth type has a style they gravitate to strongly. Sometimes very strongly. They always play mages, always play elves, etc. This is neither good nor bad on its own. But can be vexing for a DM when they want to play a magic user in Star Wars. but they can be outstanding in games that they fit into as they need often the least prep time and can slip into a character with ease.

These types dont want to be "special". They just want to play something they are familliar with or idealize.

Then theres the other types. So many.

Sixth type: doesn't want to be special, is interested in the concept, interested in the setting, but the proposed character types bore him to tears or seem too cartoonish to get involved.

Quote from: AsenRG;860371Sixth type: doesn't want to be special, is interested in the concept, interested in the setting, but the proposed character types bore him to tears or seem too cartoonish to get involved.

Which can indicate the player has misconceptions of the game or setting rather than having a set ideal they want to play.

Ran into that with the aformentioned Albedo when I was working on it.

Though it can end up having the same effect or being seen as wanting to be a special snowflake type. Sometimes it just takes sitting the player down and pointing out that the game or setting are NOT whatever misconception they had.

Quote from: AsenRG;860371For that matter, Arthur is separated by the knights with a century and a half, too.

If you mean the maybe historical warlord Arthur, that guy is 5th/6th century. Roland and Charlemagne's other Paladins are three centuries later than historical Arthur. Medieval knights a la William the Conqueror or the First Crusade are 11th century. And Pendragon ends up with King Arthur + Gothic Plate (ca 1440AD).

The chronology is not the problem. The problem is the genre mashup that this requires. If I'm playing Pendragon it's so we can all play Arthurian knights. If I want to play Samurai I'll suggest we play Land of Nippon instead.