Character creation during play

[Wormwood]

An alternative to creating the character "as needed" is to make the character creation the game mechanic. I've tried this in Past Life. I've bandied around a few other options for character creation during play, but this is the only one I've written and playtested.

  -Mendel S.

[Shadetree]

http://home.comcast.net/~tckoppang/roleplaying/persona/index.html

A game called Persona.  They call it Just In Time Roleplaying or some such.  I found it here in the Resource Library under Free Rpgs.

[Tim C Koppang]

http://home.comcast.net/~tckoppang/roleplaying/persona/index.html

A game called Persona.  They call it Just In Time Roleplaying or some such.  I found it here in the Resource Library under Free Rpgs.

Howdy.  Thanks for the plug.  I was just about to post about Persona.  Oh, and here's the updated link.  The old one still works, but the new one is much more permanent.

Anyway.  Yeah, the whole idea behind Persona is to avoid the initial character creation process in exchange for a build-as-you-go technique.  In my experience, this can either lead to a terribly undirected mess of a game, or a very surprising and directed bunch of character development.

The key to successful play under the Persona rules, in my experience, is to make sure that everyone is on board with the initial setting/situation.  Often times, this situation is a crutch--or a springboard for what turns out to be a character-centered game.  A movie or book plot that everyone is familiar with works well here.  Because there aren't strong character concepts to focus play though, you need to have something else for everyone to hang their creative efforts on.  Then, as the ball gets rolling, most of the time there's a transition from straight-up situation to spot-lit characters.

Results may vary, and there's still room for improvement--with the whole idea of on-the-fly character creation and with Persona.

[clehrich]

John Kirk posted a very funny discussion of exactly this sort of thing right here.  The rest of the thread might be helpful as well.

[madelf]

Actually I like this quote from M.J. Young

There is a degree to which what we call character generation is not the creation of the character; it is the creation of the character sheet.

It bears thinking on.


I'm mulling over an idea where the character would start as a concept and a set number of points, then run with it. When sothen they just spend a point (or several) and get the ability to do it. But if it doesn't tie into the back story of their character, then it is harder and they have to go through some mechanism to determine whether or not they have it.

It's still very vague, and I haven't got my head wrapped around it yet. And I've also started re-thinking the way my attributes work, so my brain is starting to hurt. I think this is going to take me awhile.
:)

I appreciate all the suggestions and ideas, though.
All the pieces should fall together eventually.

Edit: I'm also puzzling over whether the character creation mechanism could also serve the purpose of character advancement. An ongoing Character development thing... maybe... possibly....