Quote from: Haffrung;752614The problem with 'why not just include it' is that's a bad way to design a document for beginners. I know - I make a living writing technical and training documentation.

So what you're saying is that it's FUCKING AMAZING that RPGs ever became popular because those first books were nearly impossible for beginners to understand and your professional expectation is that readers would have just boggled up at the chargen and walked away, tossed the books in the trash. Yes?

Your 'Technical and training documentation' may be a different horse... I'm assuming your stuff is for a work environment, where people are already disinclined to learn, think the whole affair is dull and are just waiting for break/lunch. Work documentation is just about always written in a dry/sleep-inducing style.
A game is a different matter, it supposed to be fun and I assume anyone reading the booklet comes with some amount of interest and a real desire to learn to play it. If the chargen section is that big of a block of dull then it ought to be rewritten.

Quote from: Simlasa;752615So what you're saying is that it's FUCKING AMAZING that RPGs ever became popular because those first books were nearly impossible for beginners to understand and your professional expectation is that readers would have just boggled up at the chargen and walked away, tossed the books in the trash. Yes?

RPGs became popular in spite of the original rule books, not because of them. The Holmes boxed set blew my mind. It was like huffing pure imagination. But the rules themselves were utterly baffling. I had to find out how to play the game from my friend's older brother (even then, we used the pre-gens from the back of B1 for the first few months). Making the rules focused and comprehensible would in no way have detracted from the pleasure of reading the books. Clarity does not suppress inspiration.

Quote from: Haffrung;752618Making the rules focused and comprehensible would in no way have detracted from the pleasure of reading the books. Clarity does not suppress inspiration.

Who is arguing against clarity? Why should chargen be any more difficult to write in a way that a beginner will understand it vs. any other part of the rules?
None of this is advanced physics... or are my expectations different because I never moved on to 3.X version of the rules with all the feats/special abilities/skills blather that I still do not see the demarcations of. I prefer lighter rules than the recent forms of D&D... so maybe I'm assuming lighter chargen that shouldn't be confusing to anyone. Isn't 5e supposed to be lighter?

For the idiots claiming that 3E box sets didn't have chargen:

The first one, titled "Basic Game" and released in 2004 DID, in fact, have chargen.  This would be the "black dragon" box.  The "Advanced Rule Book" in this box set walks you through rolling up your abilities, choosing race, class, feats, skills, spells, armor, weapons, etc.

Now, come 2006, shortly before they decided to tank 3E/3.5, they revamped the "Basic Game" box set and turned it into two seperate boxes - the "blue dragon" box set, with chargen removed, and the "Player's Kit" box set, containing a softbound PHB.

If D&D 5e is so much simpler than 3e or 4e, why would character creation be boring or tedious?

Quote from: Endless Flight;752624If D&D 5e is so much simpler than 3e or 4e, why would character creation be boring or tedious?

Exactly! Why should any part of a game, meant to be fun and entertaining, EVER be boring or tedious?
If 3e/4e had boring/tedious chargen (it is for me) why was it allowed to ever get that way?

Quote from: Simlasa;752632Exactly! Why should any part of a game, meant to be fun and entertaining, EVER be boring or tedious?
If 3e/4e had boring/tedious chargen (it is for me) why was it allowed to ever get that way?

Because for a very vocal portion of the hardcore fanbase character generation and optimisation is a game unto itself.

Quote from: Bobloblah;752633Because for a very vocal portion of the hardcore fanbase character generation and optimisation is a game unto itself.

Yeah, I kinda figured that. Making up characters is fun for me, worrying over the numbers and numbers to come isn't.

Character generation being equated with optimisation is an issue with the rule system, and is not an innate character generation issue.

This 24 page quickstart for Dragon Warriors has character generation for a number of classes: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/fcdwfreerpgday.pdf. I don't see how it encourages optimisation.

Character creation is IMO a central part of the roleplaying experience in that before you start playing you create the role that you go on to play. This is also representative of how a vast majority of how roleplaying games actually work.

Quote from: Skywalker;752642Character generation being equated with optimisation is an issue with the rule system, and is not an innate character generation issue.

Agreed. That's why I don't get all this talk about how difficult/opaque rules for chargen are... unless it's referring to those systems that cater to the optimization crowd. But 5e isn't one of those, is it?

Quote from: Haffrung;752614The problem with 'why not just include it' is that's a bad way to design a document for beginners. I know - I make a living writing technical and training documentation. A lot of the documents I write are for new users. In the industry, they're called "Quick Starts" or "Getting Started" docs. The cardinal rule of a quick start is to include only content that is absolutely essential. It's not the place for options, extras, or even standard workflows that are not absolutely essential to getting started using the product. For all other instruction and workflows, a Quick Start references the main user documentation. In the case of 5E, that's the online character generation PDF and the PHB.

Logic has no place on the internet!?!

Quote from: Simlasa;752643Agreed. That's why I don't get all this talk about how difficult/opaque rules for chargen are... unless it's referring to those systems that cater to the optimization crowd. But 5e isn't one of those, is it?

There is a character optimisation element in 5e in that there are mechanical options when creating your PC beyond simply selecting race and class, even at level 1. Its certainly less than in 3e on which 5e is based, but it hasn't removed that element entirely. For comparison, look at something like C&C which is a similar modern take on D&D. In C&C, there are limited mechanical options outside of race and class and so its quickstart (http://www.trolllord.com/downloads/pdfs/cnc_qs.pdf) with character generation in it adds no element of optimisation.

Quote from: Simlasa;752643Agreed. That's why I don't get all this talk about how difficult/opaque rules for chargen are... unless it's referring to those systems that cater to the optimization crowd. But 5e isn't one of those, is it?

No. And character generation is as simple as use this array 16, 15, 14, 14, 12, 10 or 4d6 drop 1 arrange to taste, or 3d6 fall where they may or whatever.

I will grant that the 3 LBB and Holmes Basic may not have been particularly good at teaching 'newbs' to play D&D. But if anyone that picked up either the Moldvay or Mentzer sets couldn't learn the game because of the mind-boggling character generation rules, then they were a fucking retard, like 65 IQ retard. I can't imagine that 5e character generation would be anymore difficult for today's newbs than BD&D was for us back in the day.

In my opinion, rolling dice and making choices gives players ownership over their character, and that connection should not be discounted.

Quote from: Skywalker;752645There is a character optimisation element in 5e in that there are mechanical options when creating your PC beyond simply selecting race and class, even at level 1. Its certainly less than in 3e on which 5e is based, but it hasn't removed that element entirely. For comparison, look at something like C&C which is a similar modern take on D&D. In C&C, there are limited mechanical options outside of race and class and so its quickstart with character generation in it adds no element of optimisation..

Not for BASIC characters. No backgrounds no feats.