Quote from: JongWK;301831Your Pendragon game begs to differ,

I just knew you were going to bring that up.

What I can say is that yes, Pendragon does seem to be very good at creating unique and interesting characters.  I also notice that Pendragon is way more regulated as far as what you can and can't do, than most point-buy games. It doesn't just say "Here's 500 points, buy whatever you want", so you don't see players floundering around for 4 hours trying to decide if they want to put 2 points into wilderness survival or split them into 1 point in spot and 1 point in (knowledge)Wilderness Lore, or something like that (and then its 2 points down, 498 to go!).

RPGPundit

And for the record, I don't think that anyone who likes point-buy is also going to cheat on dice rolls. I do think that someone who cheats on dice rolls is going to min-max the crap out of point-buy.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Drohem;302002Now, that is interesting.  I haven't heard about the attribute auction method.  Briefly, how does it work?

Its not just a "method" it is the default standard system of character creation. People who don't use the auction are the ones who are deviating from the regular rules.

The Attribute auction involves the players all engaging in a bidding war (a literal out-loud auction) for first place in an attribute. Anything they bid is spent, so that when someone finally "wins" 1st place, you also know who is 2nd, 3rd, etc.
If the GM does a good job of being auctioneer you create, from the very beginning, the sense of competition between players, and people inevitably end up spending points they weren't planning to spend, in ways they didn't expect (either "fighting it out" for the precious 1st place, or jumping in to bid when they see that an attribute is going for very low).

This ends up creating a very different setup than someone just calmly allocating his points. Also, since in standard Amber its the RANKS that matter, not the points, this means that while you could just allocate the points, you can't just know that "rank 2 will cost 20 points", at least not till after the auction (when it'll be too late to get rank 1).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;302007Its not just a "method" it is the default standard system of character creation.

I didn't mean to infer or imply anything by the use of the word 'method.'

Thank you for the explanation.  It sounds very interesting and that it could be some serious fun in practice.

The Amber auction is posibly the most interesting stat generation systems out there but however you slice it is point buy. Yes the rationale you might use to spend your points are different and it creates a dynamic that is unique with players in competition rather than co-operation but its still point buy and it ain't perfect (although some simple house rules can make it much more manageable).

the one complaint I see often about point buiy is that it takes ages. Um ... yeah when I make a character it takes ages. The arguement at I want a character in 2 mins cos I just want to wander round this dungeon and kill things makes me sad as you may as well not roll anything and just draw a random pregened character from a deck of cards.

I want the players to take time building 3 dimentional characters taking time to do that is great.

This can be randomised but if you are going to invest a couple of hours in a creating a character then ending up with a random batch of stuff can be tricky (though great on occassion remember classic Traveller... how many character gens actully kill the character durring creation).

I do alright with either point-buy or random, so long as they're clearly delineated as one or the other.  I also think there is one other option that is being ignored here.

I find that if the techniques are mixed too willy-nilly, or grafted on to another otherwise unified system, it is more likely to create conflict between player intents.

For example, in D&D 3.5, I hate random rolled stats with a passion, because everything else in the game is hand-picked, and all this really does is create conflict between what the player wants to do, and what the rolls are actually compatible with.  And there's very little to extrapolate from just a handful of stats beyond lining up the highest one with whatever class has it as the prime requisite, which leads to every bit as much dull cookie cutter nonsense as point-buy is being accused of.

Now, a fully random system, or at least mostly random, like one finds in Dark Heresy or Traveller, can be great at random stuff, because everything is random, and it becomes a proper actor's challenge, taking what is basically a scripted character, and giving your own spin on how to bring him to life.  That's fun, and interesting, and a welcome trade off for the freedom of creating one's own character.

I think however, that "point-buy" is not really an accurate term for the divide here, in that not all systems with player-directed, hand-picked character design are necessarily "point-buy" or fraught with the bookkeeping that comes with pure Hero/GURPS style point buy.

Many games make use of systems where in character creation is simply a series of choices.  X class pick here, Y race pick here, Z, A, B talent pick here, done.  Dark Heresy is like this.  Low-level D&D3 is like this.  

I think a lot of things are being conflated together as a result of this excluded middle and making this whole discussion rather aimless and silly.  Either the debate here is actually between the virtues of random versus player-directed creation, or it's nothing more than a rant about a type of system that is much more specific than is being implied.

I like both Point buy and random generation. Games with high character mortaility rates should have random generation, otherwise it takes too long for someone who may die in his first couple sessions.

Quote from: Omnifray;301849PS this may be the most obvious advantage of points-buy:- you can do it in the comfort of your own home without the rest of the group being there, submit the character for the ref to approve, job done - no QUESTION of any need to have anyone standing over you physically while you roll dice. So, VERY convenient.

Not really. Because some rules lawyers become rules rapers - they find a hole in the rules and fuck it without anyone's consent. And they come up with some wacky stuff for their character.

In principle it shouldn't make a difference whether the GM is around during character generation for point-buy, but in practice it does. If you get some multi-page GURPS character to check over, you'll not give it as thorough a look as you would if you were there as the player wrote each trait or number down.

As-you-go character generation review is more thorough than when-you're-finished review. That's just part of human nature: if presented with a completed thing, we're less picky with it than if we're invited to watch each step of its creation.

Quote from: RPGPundit;301645Especially with a game that could almost, almost be called "old school" otherwise. Its like they're missing the point!

Melee, Wizard, Champions, etc. Point buy came early in the development of RPGs.

The "manliness" of Old School is not about how you generate your character but how your character exists in the subsequent campaign.

Most people prefer making up the character they want to play rather than trying to come up with something out of a series of random rolls. However this preference doesn't bear on whatever the group plays "Old School" style or not.

Finally I don't see how anybody can consider a RPG character generation "manly" unless you can die during character generation. Anybody up for rolling Traveller Characters?

Quote from: RPGPundit;301778Point buy, as well as being slower, tends towards creating characters that are above all uninteresting. I certainly don't think I've ever seen anyone create a sub-par character intentionally with point-buy, and its pretty much impossible to create a really superior character with it, though players will certainly spend HOURS trying to.

Yes this can occur with point-buy system. However shorn of the background of a setting even random character generation system can have this problem. Now you can 'bake' in the setting by building it in as part of the generation sequence. For example Harnmaster social and family tables.

Point Buy has it's own solutions in the form of template packaging the various option into interesting choices. In addition what I do is sit down with the player can get him to describe what he wants to do with the character. I then present him withsome interesting choices. We go back and forth until the character is fleshed out and then he starts using templates and the rules to build the actual character.

What it boils down to is the GM interacting with the player to produce interesting characters. In short it is the people participating not the rules that make bland characters.

Quote from: jibbajibba;301702A variation, that comes from the original Barbarian, is to do point buy with the dice. 4d6 highest three and arrange as you like is really a pool of 24d6. So pick your class and then assign the dice to the stats. So you want to play a Dwarven Warrior might have 6d6 Str, 5d6 Con, 4d6 Dex and 3d6 in the rest.

Hmm, I might steal that.

I have some guys who prefer to roll the dice. Mind you, that doesn't stop them from whining when they come up with 12, 9, 7, 14, 10, 11. So I've ended up giving them a do-over.

However, I don't see why you can't give players a choice.

For my latest D&D campaign, I've figured it's easier just to strip away the entire 3-18 thing and let the players assign their PCs a total of +6 in attribute bonuses. Or if they prefer, they can do the 4d6 thing. But if they choose the luck route, they keep what lady luck deals them and no whining.

Same with HP. Your cleric can take 5 HP at a new level, or you can roll that d8. It's up to you.

Quote from: estar;302130Most people prefer making up the character they want to play rather than trying to come up with something out of a series of random rolls. However this preference doesn't bear on whatever the group plays "Old School" style or not.

Yep. My group is pretty fucking old-school. However, some guys have no interest in ever playing spellcasters, and one guy only ever wants to play Magic-users, Druids, and Thieves. Who am I to step in tell them they need to get out of their comfort zone and play a different class?

And if you go with the '4d6, take the top 3, and assign' method, then a guy with a fighter is still going to put the highest value on Str, the 2nd highest on Dex or Con, etc, the MU is going to have Int as his highest stat, Dex as his 2nd, etc.

Point-buy is fine, though time-consuming.

Random Char-gen is fun though! Until you get a player with a 17 or 18 in every stat (D&D 4e)... It was one of those things that allowed me to wonder how much longer the son of a bitch would be cheating at my game table. (I hate dice fudging, sorry... Completely defeats the purpose of 'random' for me...)

Quote from: Haffrung;302139Who am I to step in tell them they need to get out of their comfort zone and play a different class?

• you're the Game MASTER
• you're a player in the roleplaying game, and have to have fun, too; other people always doing the same thing isn't fun, whatever watching ten years of Friends and twenty years of The Simpsons might have told you.
  
• You're the Game MASTER.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;302473

• you're the Game MASTER
• you're a player in the roleplaying game, and have to have fun, too; other people always doing the same thing isn't fun, whatever watching ten years of Friends and twenty years of The Simpsons might have told you.
  
• You're the Game MASTER.

You don't have to tell me that. My players cheerfully recognize me as the 'god' of the game table.

I have absolute control over everything in the setting, and all of the rules. I can arbitrarily change anything I like, and make any ruling I like, and nobody complains.

But the one thing my players control is their PCs. And I'm not going to dictate that my players have to run whatever class the dice dictate (unless we're playing WFRP, where it's part of the whole package). If Gord doesn't want to run spellcasters, he doesn't have to. Period.