Quote from: Marleycat;546994I did this constantly for MERPS. It is RM that Marleycat understands.

It's my sweetspot for complexity.

I miss playing MERP for the characters you could create.  

Maybe once the kids start chomping for something new, I'll be able to pull out my old MERP collection.

Quote from: Imperator;547726I think that pregens are a great choice for the first time a player or a group tries a game.

The French Appel de Cthulhu has pregens AND two different modes of character gen spread between three styles of play. Oh my!

Quote from: Benoist;547773The French Appel de Cthulhu has pregens AND two different modes of character gen spread between three styles of play. Oh my!

I'm a bit rusty on the oul Francais, what would be the general broad strokes ideas there?

Quote from: The Traveller;547777I'm a bit rusty on the oul Francais, what would be the general broad strokes ideas there?

You have a number of pregens included in the character gen chapter, from Cop to Explorer to Lawman to Artist and so on. Basically they are entirely generated, with a few articles you can modify, or shift skill points or skills to reflect what you want out of the character in 5 minutes tops.

Then you have the character gen proper, where you either use EDU (for skills relevant to your profession/occupation) and INT (for free points you can put anywhere) to generate your starting skill points, OR fixed values that are divorced from your stat scores (for the "game balance" whores, I guess).

You have three level of game play which impact character generation. Lovecraftian Horror is the weakest, and generates the characters you are familiar with (EDUx20 and INTx10 Skills OR 320 and 150 point buy). Occult Investigation modifies the multipliers on your EDU and INT to generate your starting skill scores upward (EDUx30 and INTx15 OR 480 and 225 point buy). Pulp Adventures goes further (EDUx40 and INTx20 skills OR 640 and 300 point buy) and adds starting Aplomb, which is a value that is basically substracted from all your Sanity losses and reflects your endurance to psychological trauma, because you've "been there before" in some way.

So there you have it: pregens, plus two types of character gen spread between three play styles.

PS: Huge fan of Jack and the Pork Chop Express here. Your avatar, title and sig rule, man.

Add one vote for having some pre-gen characters as well as char gen rules.  I'm all for a quick start guide, and pregens are a great way for a new player to jump right into the game

Quote from: Benoist;547780So there you have it: pregens, plus two types of character gen spread between three play styles.

I saw some of the artwork in the French Cthulhu releases, amazing stuff, good to see they are innovating in the game rules as well. So really you can pick how tough you want your characters to be starting off, based on either your stats or from a fixed point pool, or you can go with pregens. Are the pregens also divided into weak, medium and strong?

Quote from: Benoist;547780PS: Huge fan of Jack and the Pork Chop Express here. Your avatar, title and sig rule, man.

That they do.

Quote from: The Traveller;547789I saw some of the artwork in the French Cthulhu releases, amazing stuff, good to see they are innovating in the game rules as well. So really you can pick how tough you want your characters to be starting off, based on either your stats or from a fixed point pool, or you can go with pregens. Are the pregens also divided into weak, medium and strong?

They're created using the Lovecraftian Horror baseline, so basically what you can do from there is pick a pregen, and then make the difference between the starting points of the playstyle you want and Lovecraftian Horror, to then add them to the pregen and get playing ASAP.

Character creation has long been my favorite part of many a game, though it's true that many games fail to make it fun.  

I feel that there are two approaches to chargen: It either needs to be so fun that it can be a game in itself, or it just needs to be super quick and get the hell out of the way.  

Pretty much all my current favorite games fit in one of those categories.  Traveller, Heroes Unlimited, and M&M3 do the former really well, while old school D&D based games like my own Hulks and Horrors do the latter.

Horses for courses.

I like lifepath generation for certain games.
I like random for certain gameas
I like point buy for certain games

I usually have an idea inspired by the genre/setting of what I want to play. Generaly i want to find a way to play that character, but I don;t mind if the character is random so long as there is some wiggle room (like roll 6 stats and arrange to taste)
I don;t mind totally random if the genre suits.

I am fine with pregens for cons but hate the idea that you select a pregen for actually campaign play and then develop them through play, its just horrid.

I always played FATE with newbies with blank character sheets and we created characters as we went, that way when someone needed to shoot a pirate I asked them 'how good do you want to be at that', when another wanted to distract the captain I asked them 'do you want to be as good as you're shooting, better or worse?' so people built their characters as they went and figured out what they wanted to be good at

Now a game that simplifies chargen to what really matters, I think that works, let people add their little bonuses as time goes on. For me, I have bought a ton of RPG's and my first test of them is how fun and easy it is to create player character's. Too much page flicking? Too much number crunching? Not enough theme and story coming out of the process?

That experience has partly led to me creating the new Expeditions rpg for Achtung! Cthulhu as I wanted character creation to be so much fun, to communicate the spirit of the game and to be much more instant so we can get playing.

That said I think Monte had some very valid points, especially about all those little modifiers and tweaks just not really having as much impact as the first decision about being a fighter or a elf rogue etc.

Quote from: J Arcane;547830Character creation has long been my favorite part of many a game, though it's true that many games fail to make it fun.  

I feel that there are two approaches to chargen: It either needs to be so fun that it can be a game in itself, or it just needs to be super quick and get the hell out of the way.  

Pretty much all my current favorite games fit in one of those categories.  Traveller, Heroes Unlimited, and M&M3 do the former really well, while old school D&D based games like my own Hulks and Horrors do the latter.

My position as well.

Quote from: Benoist;541528"I hate character generation."

Responding to Cook's post:

(1) The first point only applies if (a) the GM is railroading you and (b) refuses to tell you what the railroaded adventure or campaign is about. The second point only applies if the system features an anemic advancement mechanic so that you can't change or add to your character's focus.

(2) Does speak to a mismatch between what new players and experienced players want. One of the mistakes of D&D has been to move more and more of the advanced customization options that are only meaningful to experienced players into the core rulebooks while making them an essential part of character creation (thus making the game significantly less appealing and accessible to new players).

Re: Pregenerated characters. I disagree that this is the solution. Sure, throw some pregens in there if you want to or have to. But in working with a lot of new players over the past couple of years, I've found that the process of character creation (as long as it remains accessible for them) is engaging and intensely interesting for them. Accessible choices that define who their character is gives them an immediate sense of possession over that character and also makes the character "real" instead of just being a pregenerated pawn. Character creation gets new players roleplaying faster than pregenerated characters.

Re: Fast character generation. I agree with this. OD&D is basically the ideal model, with the only laborious portion being equipment selection.

If I were going to design a character creation system, I would focus heavily on making the initial choices very simple. Advanced customization options would then start arriving very quickly as the character advances during play. Legends & Labyrinths effectively does this by allowing the players to switch over to "all the bells and whistles" 3E character creation at any point they want to.

I thought that the way Star Wars d6 templates and Talislanta characters worked were both fine. I definitely don't want to have to sit down with tons of splat books to make the "correct" character.

I REALLY like WEG Star Wars chargen. Pick a template, add dice to your skills, customize a bit here and there, and boom, done. That is really cool, and when you know the game, that doesn't take 5 minutes of your time. Really awesome.