Quote from: Willie the Duck;1030773And, like I say, I'm not sure I buy it. Can't it just be an exception?

Apparently not.  Designing a game to be a good game and letting the "in game justification" worry about itself has been getting Gary Gygax in trouble since 1974.

See also, "most people are booger-eating morons."

Went with "some choices"

In my preferred system, ACKS, if you do RAW chargen, you could even end up with a eunuch, should you choose the mage class

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My current project has only one race, no classes, no feats or proficiencies, no skill system, and stats that all start at 0 for everyone. Also, gender is ignored. You're still free to choose different equipment though.

Roll a string of numbers equal to 6x the number of stats (so usually 36 or 42 numbers).  Use either 3d6 or 4d6 depending on power level desired.

Start your stat array on any number in the string you choose, but then it must go in order from that point.  So you could start on the 33rd number and your characters stats would be nos 33 though 2.  (end wraps with the beginning).

This allows players to pick the one thing that's most important to them, or perhaps the string that has the best overall numbers even if not having any 18 if they're trying to qualify for a class that has multiple requisites.  

But you end up with 18 STR fighters that have their 2nd best score in WIS, or magic users with a 2nd best score in STR.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1030773And, like I say, I'm not sure I buy it. Can't it just be an exception?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1026640Random, no choices.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1027942

Quote from: Bren;1027774The player gets to decide what his character's background was? You are such the story gamer.

Well, no, actually. He doesn't get to pick which social class he was born into. He also doesn't get to decide his prior event, or background skill. His family (if you're using those rules) is also randomly rolled. Even his name is rolled (unless the GM rules otherwise).

The only thing he gets to pick is what career he gets into. Which makes sense, because we do that in real life too.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028416Then you'd probably be unqualified to play in my games, due to lack of imagination.  Dozens and dozens of players of mine have been able to do it over the years to varying degrees. None of them were 'boring' characters, because the point isn't "you have to play this boring character", it's "this is the character you have, now figure out what makes them interesting".

Quote from: RPGPundit;1028416The point being immersion, there's one thing that tends to be a bit harder for a lot of gamers than others, and that's realistically playing a member of the opposite sex. The characters also don't start out as paraplegics, geriatrics or children, either.

Since we've established that you only pick what you can choice in real life, but we don't want to break immersion that leads us to the only clear option that allows a qualified player to immerse themselves, and that is free or greatly inexpensive gender reassignment in a world with no social stigma attached. I mean, since you can't pick this before birth, it has to be possible to change genders after birth. This seems to be a clear, logical progression of these statements.

Quote from: Certified;1030863Since we've established that you only pick what you can choice in real life, but we don't want to break immersion that leads us to the only clear option that allows a qualified player to immerse themselves, and that is free or greatly inexpensive gender reassignment in a world with no social stigma attached. I mean, since you can't pick this before birth, it has to be possible to change genders after birth. This seems to be a clear, logical progression of these statements.

And I am saying, isn't it a more... I don't know... 'relevant to anything other than pedantry' to say that he is making an exception (which he explained), perhaps opening up his model to the critique that it conveniently is 'no choices, except this one choice, because I don't want to deal with that,' rather than say that he has, against any and all knowledge he has about what he has done, secretly made a society with presto magic sex changes.

This entire argument seems like something off a bad media fansite where someone opines that there must have been, let's say, a 900 year long puritanical government pogram which disallowed the creation of new art in the universe of Futurama, because how else do you explain why everyone is so knowledgeable about late 20th century pop culture? And that's the only possible explanation, because it being because it is a sitcom written by 20th/21st century writers couldn't possibly be the explanation.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1030883And I am saying, isn't it a more... I don't know... 'relevant to anything other than pedantry' to say that he is making an exception (which he explained), perhaps opening up his model to the critique that it conveniently is 'no choices, except this one choice, because I don't want to deal with that,' rather than say that he has, against any and all knowledge he has about what he has done, secretly made a society with presto magic sex changes.

This entire argument seems like something off a bad media fansite where someone opines that there must have been, let's say, a 900 year long puritanical government pogram which disallowed the creation of new art in the universe of Futurama, because how else do you explain why everyone is so knowledgeable about late 20th century pop culture? And that's the only possible explanation, because it being because it is a sitcom written by 20th/21st century writers couldn't possibly be the explanation.

I thought it more an exercise in taking a statement to an absurd but logical extreme to illustrate an issue with it. It is an odd line in the sand to draw (If you extend the idea that things you can't control in the real world are randomly determined there are practically endless rolls to make) when the game is otherwise so hardcore on Random Uber Alles and its creator  has stated it not as merely a preference but the obectively right way to play and those who don't wish to play that are somehow deficient.

BTW: I assume by choosing your name it means as far titles, inheritance and other legal matters. You can have your character call themselves whatever you wish?

Quote from: RPGPundit;1030142It was YOUR statement, that point-buy is something preferred by people who feel like they  have no control over their own lives or whatever.

As one reason among many and probably more conductive to your long term health than going to a bar and getting wasted while bitching about your crappy job. There's a reason that roleplaying is actually used by mental health professionals after all. Dealing with your issues by playing a game is a hell of a lot healthier than a lot of alternatives. You might also have fun doing it.

I also note that you also ignored all the other possible reasons I listed (craftsman mentality or having specific avenues of play they wish to explore that random rolls make far less likely to provide them for two example); probably because its harder to make strawmen out of them. You're as bad as the SJW story gamers you hate so much; you just preach your version of OSR as the One-True-Way and insult anyone who doesn't agree.

The point though is that not everyone plays games for the same reasons you do. Some aren't playing to for the opportunity to explore what the random dice rolls tell them to... some are there because they like solving the puzzles/problems the GM throws at them. Some want to immerse themselves in the lore and events going on. Some are just playing because they want to slaughter orcs by the thousands.

Some people feel that creativity is an ACTIVE pursuit that starts from the shape their avatar in the game world takes, not a passive exercise in accepting random rolls. They'd rather build something they feel expresses themselves than try to make the incongruous results of a bunch of random rolls try to make sense. Some people don't even care if their concept is creative... they just want to play it because they find it interesting.

And none of those answers is wrong.

QuoteD&D doesn't play like chess. Unless you're a ridiculously bad GM.

You are either being deliberately obtuse or are an actual ignoramus if you can't grasp the concept of argument by analogy.

QuoteThe fact that you envision scenarios like this, and having these results, just tells me you're incredibly unimaginative.

A) Rhetorical hyperbole. Look it up if you're not familiar.

B) My day job is creating artwork for people using unusual mediums. I have people asking me regularly to run games for them because of the richness of my settings. I'll be sure to tell them that a guy who's claim to fame is copying game systems other people actually developed and slapping a bit of Wikipedia history/mythology on it thinks I'm unimaginative.

QuoteIf you're not talking about playing canon superheroes, then what you get from point-buy is a bunch of carefully min-maxed superheroes, with a selection of powers meant to be carefully crafted to be as effective based on the RULES as possible, and chosen from a limited range of experiences.

Or you can play with adults instead of man-children. Its amazing how all the crap you say you need random rolls to prevent just drops away when you do.

You get people who take super-leaping even though flight would be faster and cheaper in the rule set because their concept was of a character who's only power is superstrength (playing the fourth generation of a heroic line where each member represents one of the ages of comics; gold, silver, iron, mercury). They paid points for things like being able to shore up building foundations using found objects (just like you see them do in comics), 'entangle' foes by wrapping steel girders around them and interpose themselves between an attacker and their target, but didn't take 'impervious defense', even though it would be cheaper and more effective to just have bullets automatically bounce off because super-strong muscle isn't the same as invulnerable to them (indeed, though unlikely, they could even take damage from a small caliber handgun... not much relative to their total health, but it made every time they jumped into a hail of bullets to protect people a gamble and, to them, more heroic than just being invulnerable and doing the same) and deliberately tanked their dodge score because the hero was so used to jumping into the path of fire to protect people, his muscle memory actually worked against him.

Perhaps its not all that creative, but its far more nuanced and therefore interesting than what random rolls will typically produce (because in super-hero games it usually leads to a random mix of unconnected powers). They're taking the time to really think about the implications of how the character fits together.

Then there was the shapeshifter who could have built themselves a couple of very efficient combat forms with a 'disguise' ability and fluffed them as all the animal forms they could take; but instead went the much less efficient route (about 60% more expensive) of taking the full shapeshifting power (limited to animals) because it felt more true to the concept.

Or the ghost of a murdered girl who built herself a body made of unwanted toys and hunted those who preyed on children; show me where on the random tables you get THAT power combo.

Hell, we can even play Rifts where, despite the GM allowing every possible book and no one really discussing what everyone else was playing, there wasn't a Godling, Cosmoknight, Dragon, Glitterboy or even a Juicer in sight and the one non-human member of the party was a Dog Boy. The strongest member was a human Ley Line Walker right out of the core book who didn't take Carpet of Adhesion because they felt that was too broken a spell.

Also, from my experience the people who's primary concern is how absolutely "optimal" their character is using point-buy are actually pretty freaking bad at it. The one man-child we had like that always built cripplingly overspecialized builds that were extremely easy to put down the moment you figured out their one trick and what they had to tank to get it. If you looked at their sheet in some games everything was right out of the gold/sky-blue lists of some easy to find charops guide and those almost never take into account actual table play (where you need to be able to do more than just one thing), just theoretical white-room 'how to get the most X' crap.

My advice... play with more married couples, preferably ones with kids. There is nothing like having kids to make you grow up and kill the man-child behavior.

Even better, play with their 10-13 year old kids. They're more creative than you, me or just about any other adult in the room (and also don't care about charops).

My goddaughters play a one-eyed snake dragon that spits acid (named Hazel... that is quite important), a mermaid warrior princess with a sea-lion companion (not seal; a lion front with a fish tail) who grow legs on land, a winged elven magical girl who summons monsters to fight her enemies, and a mad-genius steampunk inventor. Random rolls aren't going to get them anything more creative than that AND they're playing what they want to (and enjoying the heck out of it), not what some random table told them to play.

QuoteOh yeah, I'm sure you're quite the artiste.

So you DO understand sarcasm. If you get that then you surely get analogy or hyperbole too. So you were just being a "Shitlord." Which is great and all... if you're twelve.

Have fun with your random rolls down there. My godkids and their parents will continue to have fun doing what we do.

My favorite method of character generation?

A pretty girl with REALLY big tits strips to the waist, hauls off, and smacks me on the side of the head with her tits.  I measure how far my glasses fly, in inches, and that's the stat number.

Years ago (at least a decade) there was a website where you could type in the UPC code of whatever snack foods were laying around and it would use those numbers to randomly generate your character.

Alas, I just looked and couldn't find it with the Goog.

Weird, I remember that UPC thing too.

FWIW, I prefer random gen. Bottom line, if you go point-buy, sooner or later everyone min-maxes, and there's little need for two players to have the same character class in the party because if you're doing "the bestest possible thing" with your character, you should do another class, and if you are, then you're identical in every way to the other character.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;1030732I don't know that I buy his point, but you've got it reversed. He is stating that since gender isn't a choice, it would flow from your logic of "The only thing he gets to pick is what career he gets into. Which makes sense, because we do that in real life too" that the player ought also not be able to choose their character's gender.

I agree with you about the logic and contradictory point and that it seemed clear that Pundit made gender choice an exception to the rule that you can't select anything during character creation that your character couldn't pick to accommodate the preferences of some players. The diatribes from either side about who is more or less imaginative are just so much tripe designed to try to attach some sort of intellectual or moral superiority to play preferences. Personally I'd be fine to play an RPG where choice of gender, initial career, and character name* are all out of the player's hands. But I don't think my willingness to play that character means I'm more imaginative than someone who is unwilling. And to be fair I wouldn't want every RPG I play to work that way.

And elaborating on what a character can really choose, if one really wanted to eliminate choices that the character can't choose than allowing career choice is also a bit of an exception to the rule. In real life (now or historically) many people have restrictions, sometimes severe restrictions, on their career choices. People often don't get to choose any career they want. Believe me I've tried to choose the the idle rich or the wealthy dilettante career for many years now with absolutely no success.



* Because in many cultures parents select the child's personal name, family names follow birth, and nicknames get chosen by friends, rivals, enemies, and bystanders.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;1030455To me "giving your dinkie a sad" implies pouting and/or whining

That meaning was not clear to me. Thanks for clarifying.

Quote from: Bren;1031140I agree with you about the logic and contradictory point and that it seemed clear that Pundit made gender choice an exception to the rule that you can't select anything during character creation that your character couldn't pick to accommodate the preferences of some players. The diatribes from either side about who is more or less imaginative are just so much tripe designed to try to attach some sort of intellectual or moral superiority to play preferences. Personally I'd be fine to play an RPG where choice of gender, initial career, and character name* are all out of the player's hands. But I don't think my willingness to play that character means I'm more imaginative than someone who is unwilling. And to be fair I wouldn't want every RPG I play to work that way.

And elaborating on what a character can really choose, if one really wanted to eliminate choices that the character can't choose than allowing career choice is also a bit of an exception to the rule. In real life (now or historically) many people have restrictions, sometimes severe restrictions, on their career choices. People often don't get to choose any career they want. Believe me I've tried to choose the the idle rich or the wealthy dilettante career for many years now with absolutely no success.



* Because in many cultures parents select the child's personal name, family names follow birth, and nicknames get chosen by friends, rivals, enemies, and bystanders.

Clearly you can pick your name, even if you're not a DJ.

So there seems to be a lot of confusion around how I was able to so clearly deduce the abundance of gender reassignment magic in the worlds of Punditry. The answer is simple, when you make sweeping statements about how games should be played and if you don't play them just like me then you are less of a person then it's time to start doling out some fun. Part of the definition of the word game is a form of play and playing means to engage in an activity for recreation or enjoyment.

Early on, I said that I'd be willing to play in a setting of completely random, or limited character choices, albeit, mostly at conventions or when a funnel is used to weed out a battery of random characters. At the same time, I also said I'm a fan of selected life paths and point buys. None of these methods are perfect, the question is what's right for the game, and what's right for the player. A number of games even include multiple ways to generate characters, because the designers realize that role-playing and character creation is not a one size fits all category.

Where things get really fun for me is when statements like, if you don't do things my way then you're not as imaginative, but, it's too hard to play a different gender. Why's that, are you not that imaginative? If you want to call something authentic with no choices you couldn't otherwise make yourself, then gender is one of them. There's a number of other things as well, such as birth defects, childhood illness, famine, plague, disease, all the things that made the middle ages great one should incorporate as well, I mean, if you're staying authentic.

Otherwise, accept that it is just a game, and people are playing for fun. They just might not want to play your way, and that doesn't make them any lesser of a gamer, or person.