Immersive vs. Immedeate Character Creation

[Resonantg]

G'day people :c)

A question came up with the game I currently have in development regarding character creation (CC).  The issue is whether gamers prefer Immersive (read as Long) processes, versus Immedate (read as Fast) processes.

In my experience both have their own advantages, but I've always been one who prefers Immersive CC.  My two favorite games for CC is Cyberpunk 2020, and Twilight 2000 2nd ed, believe it or not.  I love the Lifepath process used in Cyberpunk, because regardless of what I had in the past, it inserted surprises to my character's history (and assuming you have a GM that didn't force silly events to screw up characters) it always gave more richness and depth to the character's personality.  Same went for Twilight 2000.  It's skill method was attached to a time metric where the greater skills you got, the more your character aged.  I really liked that level of detail that provided me with an interesting history from "first you graduated High School then went to college, and the military, then prison and then war broke out."  To me this has always been much more fun than say GURPS or D&D which just had you roll and throw together stats that didn't provide any sort of depth to your character beyond simple gamist/statistical data.

So has anyone noticed some serious market trends about games that would be anti-Immersive CC or cause serious problems with marketability of the game due to a longer, Immersive process, versus a quick and dirty Immedeate process of CC?

Thank you for your opinions!  :c)

PS: Sorry if this has been done before, and I missed it in my searches.  This is a big site.

[Jasper]

Hi MDB (?), and welcome.

There's almost definitely not going to be any market research you can look at. The industry/hobby is really like a big dark room as far as that goes. But even if there were, and it suggested games with brief char gen sold better, would that mean much? It could easily be because more games of that sort are made -- not because people actually prefer them.

Regardless, it's obvious that you're pretty happy with the game as it stands, with long char gen. So stick with it. Everyone around here will tell you that it's no use making a game that you don't like;  that you're not enthused about. No opinion poll is going to tell you what decisions to make: you've got to make the call. if you think long char gen has decided advantages, or is just preferable to you, then go for it.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya!

Welcome to the Forge!  It's good to have you join us. :)

As a rule, when it comes to things like player preferences for character creation, resolution systems, die types, rules heavy vs. rules lite, and so on, there is a general consensus here that "preferenece" is not really the issue.

In your case, a Long CC or a Short CC will work perfectly.  The length doesn't really matter. What does matter is that your character craetion process accomplishes what YOU want for the game.  If a long process suits your game, then use it!  If a short one does, then use that :)  

Trying to pin down "player preferences" on someting like that would be nearly impossible.  Honestly, what players really prefer is a game that is fun to play.  All the heavy vs. lite or long vs. short arguments are really not the issue.  Players will play anything, so long as it is fun to do! :)

So, just to continue the conversation, what part of character creation is most important to you?  What do you consider fun?  :)

Peace,

-Troy

[Resonantg]

LOL... Bad GM no Doritos. ;c)

Yeah, in a way I have been trying to focus group things... something I hate, but at the same time, I wanted to make sure on whether or not there was possibly someting I was missing.  I really don't want to be a blunt hard@$$, especially if I'm wrong.  My wife reminds me that she's the only one who's always right, after all. :cD

That being said, in a way this was more or less an opinion poll kinda thing or to find out if I was just being obstenate on my PoV.  

Thanks for confirming my gut impression that there could be many other factors as to why a certain form of CC was popular.  I have to admit I haven't bought a new game system for at least 10 years, simply because I haven't found any that addressed what I wanted in a system.  I've tried a few here and there, but generally, meh... they usually went too light.  Then again, I was worried I may be the freak in enjoying more crunchy, detail, flexibility and variety.  Heck, the group I play with usually thinks that 250 skills (a la palladium) is too small a sample and are always looking for greater variety as long as it's well defined.  And that's basically the kind of house rule suppliments I've created in the past.

And of course, you're absolutely right, if you don't like what you're creating, you're dead in the water.  Thanks for reminding me of that fact.

Once again, thanks for the warm welcome and super speedy response!  I'm just not used to that yet. ;c)

BTW, if anyone can direct me to any other market research on RPGs other than WotC's 2000ish set which was wholely unhelpful, I'd appreciate it.

[John Kim]

I'd agree with others here to go with what you like.  However, to anser your questions about marketing...

So has anyone noticed some serious market trends about games that would be anti-Immersive CC or cause serious problems with marketability of the game due to a longer, Immersive process, versus a quick and dirty Immedeate process of CC?

Long, "life-path" style character generation (which tracks the PC through years) has always been a minority approach -- from the original Traveller to today.  The top ten selling RPGs have generally been for relatively quick character generation where you define what you want from the start.  On the other hand, there is certainly room for that minority and often it is best to market to your niche rather than trying to imitate the top ten and go head-to-head with them.  

BTW, if anyone can direct me to any other market research on RPGs other than WotC's 2000ish set which was wholely unhelpful, I'd appreciate it.

There was a D20 Market research report about a year later, but it has been taken out of public circulation, unfortunately.  Ken Hite reports some  interesting numbers from time to time on his http://www.gamingreport.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=listarticles&secid=10"> Out of the Box column.

[Selene Tan]

Burning Wheel is a recent game that uses Lifepaths, although never having played it I'm not entirely sure how it uses them.

[M. J. Young]

If you're talking about designing and marketing your own game, one of the issues you will face is the Demo. It is almost impossible to build a following for a game without running single sessions at conventions and game stores where people will have the opportunity to get a taste of what your game is like.

Long-style character creation systems present the obstacle that in the minds of many players you're not really playing until you've gotten past that part, and in a convention particularly they are unlikely to have that kind of patience--they want to play. Thus you need to be able to persuade people that they're having fun very early in the demo.

One way to do this is to make that character generation process itself fun and interesting, so people feel like they're already playing when they're making the character. Lifepaths can do this, but they don't always succeed. For what it's worth, so-called short form character generation can become incredibly long and cumbersome itself. Creating a party of complete characters for AD&D1 can be an entire game session in itself, and those who use all the detail (e.g., social class, encumbrance, non-weapon proficiencies, family, previous skills) will frequently require new players to meet outside game sessions to build a character. Still, if the process is fun, people will get involved in it.

A second way to get people into the game early is obviously to make character generation short and sweet. That's evident. The key to his is identifying which aspects of the character you're creating are the important ones, focusing on those immediately, and tossing the rest into some shortcut method. Classes do this: you don't decide that you want to have so much ability at sneaking, so much at pilfering, so much at lockpicking; you just say "thief", and the details are standardized. Skill packages can do the same thing--taking "sailor" so that you have a batch of related skills, and then adding "carpenter" with a different batch of skills, builds a character more quickly than picking out those skills individually. Many quick character creation games, though, go for the main points and leave the details to in-play decision. For example, Sorcerer includes "cover" as a character creation detail, essentially giving the character a somewhat generic place in the real world. During play, if "cover" is police officer the player can fill in details such as he is trained to shoot a gun, he carries handcuffs, and he knows how to use a radio.

A third approach is similar to this: create the main points of the character up front and have means of creating the rest of the character as it is needed. This was Multiverser's on-the-fly character creation process. You don't need to have all your attribute values on the page to start play; you just need to determine those which are well outside the average, and the rest you can jot down as they are needed.

What some people do if they have long character generation systems and need to get into a demo quickly is to use pregens for demos. This is a reasonable way to do it, but the downside is it immediately tells the player that he would not really enjoy the character creation process, or it's too complicated to use in this situation, or (possibly worse than these) you have carefully matched a character to your expected game play in a way that no longer really shows how the game plays at home. Still, in many situations it's the only way really to get to the play of the game if character generation is going to chew up too much time.

So if you're going for a long character generation process, give significant thought to how you would demo the game in a limited time situation, or figure out how you're going to market the game without demos of that sort. Not all games demo well in the short term; you need to figure out how to make your game shine in that situation if you're going to use it.

--M. J. Young