Reddit-Crosspost: A Point on Character Creation

[nemedeus]

I found an interesting thread on r/RPGdesign about simple vs. complex character creation systems, this link takes you there.

These two (consecutive) posts are of special interest to 'Bastards"Start with the Character you want" philosophy:

One drawback of "complex chargen, simple play" is that you're putting the hardest, most impactful decisions up-front when the players have the least information to make them. At character creation, you don't really know how effective melee weapons vs ranged weapons vs persuasion will be, or how much time you'll spend in the wilderness vs dungeons vs cities. You can make educated guesses and the GM can tell you their plans and adapt to your choices, but it still might not work out.

One way to mitigate this is to postpone the complexity to higher levels. A first-level D&D character is much simpler than a tenth-level character, and by then the player will have a better idea of what character stats and abilities will give them the kind of play they want.

Another way is to make the advancement mechanics very flexible. If your starting choices don't lock you in and you have many opportunities to change your character focus, then a new player can pick whatever sounds interesting and adjust as they play.

That is a really good point. I can't tell you how many games I've played in where I've completely rebuilt my character after the first session. In fact, the "first session full respec" is something that we just practice as a rule in my group. I also really like it when systems include some sort of limited respec at every level- allowing you to move a few skill points around and such. It feel natural and is more forgiving for the player.

I think this is the purest intent behind most leveling systems, particularly why early levels go quickly and later levels take so long to get. If you start very bare-bones, you can quickly gain skills and track them, before levelling off- but the higher levels also introduce more complicated abilities with deeper interactions.

In other words, chargen confronts the player with hard choices, and Players can find that they have made bad choices after the first playsession.

Starting weak and quickly gaining power, as seen in d20 style systems, allows players to quickly incorporate priorities mapped out in play.
Bastards greatly alleviates the problem by limiting the skill list, if the released Character Sheet is anything to go by.
Nevertheless, this is something i haven't previously thought about, so there you go.

[EinBein]

In my experience, this highly depends on specific player preferences.
My regular gaming group is roughly cut in half:

• The more RP-focused players generate characters as they think they portray the kind of person they are imagining and have never asked for a respec ever.
• The more crunch-focused players come regularly, not only in the beginning but also way into the campaign and ask for respec-possibilities.

There will never be a rulesystem that caters for all their different tastes, so some GM ruling will always be involved.

For example one of the two crunch players has two main focuses: Playing a relatively powerful character and being able to develop his character-sheet with new skills and powers (best served from some kind of skill-tree) constantly. Ho isn't too much into lively description and basically doesn't care if his blows deduct hitpoints or deal damage like TRoS in more specific ways accompanied by some RP-description.

The other crunch player likes powerful characters as well, but always chooses risk over safety. Naked barbarians with two-handed axes would be his standard choice in any gameworld. He likes the martial descriptions from systems like TRoS or even Rolemaster wound tables.

The two RP-players are more interested in character play. One has a particular interest in non-complex rules and ends up playing some supportive fighter style most often so he isn't forced to play with more difficult rulesets like magic or the like. The other favors characters with some magic, but never with combat focus.

From playing with this bunch and some others switching in and out since nearly twenty years, I know there will never be a perfect consensus between them all. Sometimes, I wish I had a more homogenous group of players as was the case with another group I played with parallely, who were all very RP-focused (playing TDE 1st to 3rd edition since decades among themselves)

[hector]

Personally, I think this is a matter of taste. I mean, the more complex character creation is, the more guidance is needed by the GM but the more control you have over how your character begins (unless it goes completely nuts, such as in HarnMaster). For example, in GURPS I've always been of the opinion that the GM should at least offer a few character templates if the players want them, and should always double check character sheets prior to play in order to ensure that someone hasn't spent ages on a character that won't be fun to play.

The more time I've invested into genning a character, the more invested I'll probably be in that character - and to be fair, that's probably deliberate. After all, in old school D&D, characters are supposed to be expendable; treated as pieces on a board rather than as actual characters (Gygax must be turning in his grave, not that I care).

In the case of Band of Bastards, I suspect that the majority of complexity here will be determined by player skill rather than character generation, as the GM starts adding complexity to match what the players are able to deal with. I mean, since the game is based on the player characters' actions rather than the GM's pre-determined plot, it's hard to create a character who won't be fun to play unless the player completely misunderstands the rules - which means that the GM isn't doing their job properly.

[higgins]

At character creation, you don't really know how effective melee weapons vs ranged weapons vs persuasion will be, or how much time you'll spend in the wilderness vs dungeons vs cities. You can make educated guesses and the GM can tell you their plans and adapt to your choices, but it still might not work out.

This almost sounds as if the players had no control over what they will be doing you during play. I'm so glad we have SAs to fix this.

The more time I've invested into genning a character, the more invested I'll probably be in that character - and to be fair, that's probably deliberate.

In 'Bastards, the character creation will be a collaborative effort. This will make doubly sure that everyone is on the same page, and that includes getting the GM on that page as well. In addition, the collaborative character creation means that the players (not just the GM) will be creating parts of the setting as well, further alleviating the issue.

[taelor]

I primarily run Burning Wheel, which has one of the more complex character generation processes; however I very rarely have players ask to respec. The only time this has happened in 5 years of playing the system was once, when, a few sessions in, we found that an obscure rule made it impossible for the fledgling wizard character to cast his one spell (it was a sustained-type spell, but his forte stat was too low to sustain it even for a few minutes). I let him re-jigger his stats on the principle that you shouldn't take away the things that make the player characters interesting.

As a general rule, I always devote a full session to character and setting generation, which is always done collaboratively. On more than one occasion, I've outright told new players "this character is an unplayable Frankenstein monstrosity; restat him so he plays like an actual person."

[Agamemnon]

In other words, chargen confronts the player with hard choices, and Players can find that they have made bad choices after the first playsession.

Starting weak and quickly gaining power, as seen in d20 style systems, allows players to quickly incorporate priorities mapped out in play.
Bastards greatly alleviates the problem by limiting the skill list, if the released Character Sheet is anything to go by.
Nevertheless, this is something i haven't previously thought about, so there you go.

I absolutely agree with this, actually. The OSR hack my group runs for D&D style adventures works on exactly this principle, with the characters starting somewhat generic and allowing you more customization as you get a further grasp on the game. One of the things I adore about OSR-era stuff is that the players don't actually need to know the mechanics. In fact, early TSR work actively discouraged players from knowing the specifics of the mechanics. All of the crunch was in the DMG.

However...

At character creation, you don't really know how effective melee weapons vs ranged weapons vs persuasion will be, or how much time you'll spend in the wilderness vs dungeons vs cities. You can make educated guesses and the GM can tell you their plans and adapt to your choices, but it still might not work out.

This almost sounds as if the players had no control over what they will be doing you during play. I'm so glad we have SAs to fix this.

The more time I've invested into genning a character, the more invested I'll probably be in that character - and to be fair, that's probably deliberate.

In 'Bastards, the character creation will be a collaborative effort. This will make doubly sure that everyone is on the same page, and that includes getting the GM on that page as well. In addition, the collaborative character creation means that the players (not just the GM) will be creating parts of the setting as well, further alleviating the issue.

Higgins has the right of it. The issue of "how much time in the forest" vs "how much time in the city" and other similar "did I make my character appropriately for this game" issues come out of a fundamental lack of communication. Traditionally, players make their characters for a campaign the GM sets up, and then the players have to hope that they are suited to the campaign. In 'Bastards, the group actively creates the campaign first together and then the characters as part of the first session. The players know what to expect, because they helped work it out in the first place. Further, through their SAs they directly guide where the game is going to go.

The players are through their choices constantly telling the GM where they want to go, what they want to see, and how they want to be challenged. There should never be a mismatch between the players expectations and the game to be had, because they've been involved every step of the way.

[thirtythr33]

There are some other terrible things I always see repeated in character creation.

False choices.

Basically, any time the character creation forces you to make a choice that doesn't actually make any difference. An example of this would be how old editions of DND had the option to arrange your ability scores. If you had one 15 and the rest of the scores were in the 7 to 14 range your really making only 1 choice. Which ability do I want a +1 in? I've seen some players agonize over whether they should have a 12 CHA or 9 INT, when in actuality it makes absolutely no difference.

Unclear consequences.

Any time your forced to make a character building choice without first knowing exactly what the consequences of that choice are. An example of this would be a game that has ability score or skill requirements to enter sub-classes at later levels. How was I supposed to know thieves needed 12 Int to becomes a master locksmith?

Honey Pot choices.

A honey pot is a bait or a trap. If a character generation system gives you a choice to boost STR or CHA you assume the game has equal mechanical support for combat and dialogue. If you pick a CHA bonus and it turns out that actually, all NPC interaction is handled through role playing alone... then you got scammed. If the game doesn't support a persuasion build, don't put those options in the game!

Choice paralysis.

Cutting down the number of options to pick from at any given stage of character creation makes things easier. Picking from a list of 300 skills (I'm looking at you Burning Wheel) leads to choice paralysis. Having such a huge number of options also lends itself heavily to being optimized and difficult to balance.

If you cut out all the false choices, honey pots and make the consequences of every character generation choice clear, it greatly reduces the information load. Then character generation is more about deciding what KIND of CHARACTER you want to play instead of learning how to BUILD an AGENT that operates within a system.