Why Choice Sucks: the Beauty of Random Generation

[greyorm]

Recently, I was trying to make a TROS character for a game starting via Indie-netgaming and about five minutes into character creation, I realized something: I had no idea what the heck to put where!

Now, I don't mean the rules were confusing in that they didn't tell me what went where, or how to derive and place points into the various stats. Rather, having not played TROS before, I did not know what I should be placed where, how the various scores I could place would function in play, and thus which scores would best serve my purposes in which particular categories.

Does that sound like Gamist resource management? Or like I am trying to beat the system? Though it could be, it isn't. Consider that if I want to play a particular type of character (which is the usual argument for the use of choice-based character generation) I need to place my points "correctly", so that once in play the actual character effectiveness in particular categories meet my expectations of the character's effectiveness in those categories.

While I could gain answers to all my questions about designing a character by posting to the appropriate forums and asking the right questions (as well as recieving the right answers), I really should not have to consult anything other than the reference book in order to create a character I can feel comfortable with in play. Yet time and again, I find new systems produced where you actually have to have played once or twice in order to really understand the act of character creation itself (in that system) in order to produce a personally-viable character by choice, or have the help of an experienced player of that same game in order to produce a character that will meet your expectations.

I dare to proclaim that this state of affairs is not good for the hobby, as it reduces the chances of selling these games to new groups who do not have an established member-player of a particular game, someone who can function as the character-creation sounding board for the group (ie: "What will happen if I put X into Y? Will he be able to do Z?")

Point-based, choice-based character creation: it's the devil, I say. Give me the purity of a randomized character creation system!

Given that there is generally strong opposition to randomness in modern design, mainly (it is argued) because RPGs should be about playing a character you design, that it is better if you are "involved" in the character's design. The vote against randomness in generation is solidly defended as a fact: one must be playing the character they want to play.

However, I fail to see any compelling reason why one would, by default, be less involved in the playing out of a character over whom they had little or even no initial design input. Actors do this constantly -- they do not design or create the personas they play, yet they make these characters their own, and connect with them as "their" character(s). To me, then, the most given argument as above seems a dodge based upon something other than the player's "involvement" with the character via design.

Obviously, the benefits I am going to talk about will not appeal to everyone equally (or possibly even at all, though I view that reaction as remote if one is considering rather than reacting) but I suggest that there are major benefits, often overlooked or disregarded because of the concept of "what an RPG is" or what you are "supposed to do" (or be allowed to do) with an RPG. So, clear your head of previous judgements and consider...

There are many joys to randomization, such as the fact that it makes character creation easier. Absolutely none of the knowledge discussed above is remotely necessary to make a character with randomized methods. Instead, you roll some dice, and as long as you understand how to roll the dice in play, *bam* you've got something you can sit down with and discover as you play.

Random character generation also prevents the dreaded "system abuse" most gamers are so girlishly-squealing fearful of. There is no number or skill juggling to make that "perfect" character, mechanically, so for those looking for a leg up through superior knowledge of the rules and/or mathematical competence, they are instead forced to win with what they are given. In many ways, that can be the best sort of challenge, and the most rewarding.

This also has the added benefit of making each new character a new challenge. The system might be known after the first character, and with point/choice-based character creation, you know how to work the system to produce the various effects you desire, and often to the best effect. However, when the character is a random design, working the angles with the limitations and benefits of each new character is as fresh as it was with the first one: a process of testing, exploration, and discovery lending a newness and tension to each event.

For those concerned about such issues, random generation also produces more "realistic" characters if the system is set up right. There is no choosing of advantages and disadvantages that often result in the "one-armed blind albino midget genius acrobat" problem, nor other similar mechanical tricks often utilized to front-load characters once a system's loopholes are well-known.

Random character generation also forces an individual to play a role, a role they didn't choose, so they have to make it work and make it their own. Or as I would put it, randomness encourages non-ego-based character creation and non-ego-fantasy play, which (tangentially) is the bane of my existance and I hate to all ends of the earth. This also puts a stop to those (honestly annoying) players who play the same, eventually tiresome character in every game, such as the guy who only plays dwarves who all act alike, or the girl who only plays the bitchy, snooty paladin.

Randomness also encourages creativity. One must work out how all the disparate elements fit together for this character, how he (or she) came to be the way he is. This forces thought about the character, retro-fitting and gap-filling, which is usually an extremely awarding process when one is finished.

A common problem I have run into over the years regarding character creation is that for many players, including myself, one does not truly get a handle on one's character until the character has been experienced in play, often over time. In such cases, having to design the character only adds a level of complexity and frustration to character design, since the very design, via assumptions developed during generation which inform the character's design, may lead to unplayability.

In such cases, randomized generation can be quite liberating, as one is not constrained to pre-conceived notions of "what the character should be like" during the design process, one simply enters play and discovers what the character they have recieved actually is like, unbound by the preconceptions that would have been necessary in the character's original design choices.

As I mention above, random character generation is good for the hobby. It allows new blood to enter into the hobby, or into new games, without necessitating a great deal of system knowledge on their part, speeding entry into new venues of play and encouraging a wide variety of experiences.

Finally, keep in mind that I am not merely talking about "Random Ability Scores", here, but the whole ball of wax: skills, attributes, personality, appearance, background, special powers, etc. For example, I have heard Warhammer is like this: everything is random, and you often end up with lame beggars as characters, rarely with powerful wizards. I have heard gamers complain endlessly about this, yet I think it sounds incredibly fun!

That said, I am also not necessarily advocating complete randomness always and everywhere (even Warhammer allows some few choices). There are obviously different types of randomness, ranging from less to more, circumscribed or open (particular choices or previous results limiting the range of possible results), and various applicative limits (ie: "Just Attributes will be random" to "Everything will be random").

It also occurs to me that I should mention random character generation could be used to good effect in any of the GNS modes. As I forsee some complaint about this restricting Narrativist goals, let me state up front that I do not see a problem with having pre-defined characters in a situation, since the ultimate Theme -- the answer to the Premise -- remains up for grabs.

Some individuals may be selfishly inclined towards complete control of their avatar, to the detriment of their own enjoyment; I see the desire to maintain control over design as more of an "issue" rather than a "preference." Obviously it can be the latter, but in the majority of cases, it is the former masked as the latter.

In fact, if one refers to the recent thread of mine about Typhoid Mary, one finds that restricted choice and freedom of choice have little to do with Narrativism, except when it comes to answering the Premise. Otherwise, it does not appear to cause major suffering or impact upon that particular mode of play. Yet this belief is a trap into which I myself fell easily, thus my suggestion of masking above.

Other modes of play can be discussed later, if anyone so desires to detail the supposed drawbacks and likely benefits for each, though some are touched on in the above noted benefits.

So, there are great benefits of utilizing randomized character creation in one's design. Far from the process being an artifact of "stone age design" or "restrictive", I hope at least one of the items detailed above will convince folks to give it a try in creating their own systems, or at least include randomizing systems alongside choice-based design. Random character generation is a boon, particularly (if not expecially) for more complex game systems, and I (for one) would like to see more of it.

[b_bankhead]

The reason we have choice based generations systems is, I think primarily because so many people had highly negative experiences with random generation. I know I did which is why I automatically reject any system primarilly based on it.

Random generation is a disaster for  gamist play because it is inherently going to create unequal characters.  Gushing about how this is a 'challenge' or 'liberating' simply doesn't change this fact. Some players are going to start out with unequally effective characters.  This is not good for gamist play.

Also many people , as a matter of fact simply didn't like the characters foisted on them by  random systems.  This lead to any number of in game suicices as playter got rid of undesireable characters and rolled up new ones.

Also random systems tended to produce lots of bizarre or inappropriate characters.  Again calling the gyrations necessary to accomodate this 'creativity' doesn't change this.

Random systems tended to devolve to 'roll until you get what you want ' systems or 'pick what you want from the list' systems as [people got sick of undesireable characters. ( think of all those D&D fighters with 18/00 strength, something that should occur only 1 in 21,600 roles).

A person who is as concerned about optimization as the example you give of yourself isn't going to loose that concern with a randomized system.

The answer to the problem? Don't design player creation systems that require extensive knowlege of the system to produce a 'good' character.  Or simply let people design by concept and toss out the build points which almost never achieve their goal of mantaining balance anyway.

[anonymouse]

I love random character generation.

Personal thoughts and responses on the subject:

I tend to get really hung up on the -core- of the character I'm trying to come up with; I get wishy-washy about whether or not this thing I'm trying to come up with is "cool enough" or "interesting enough", et cetera. To the point where I usually just give up on the game and get bummed out about ever enjoying roleplaying again.

Most of this can be worked around with that bit of random generation that's still with us: lifepath! I think Burning Wheel uses this; other examples off the top of my head are Mekton Zeta (most RTalsorian games use lifepath, I think) and MechWarrior, and there's a supplement for D&D3E with lifepath (Hero Builder's Guidebook?). Lifepath is super-liberating for me: randomly create this guy's life, relationships, big skill packages, then assign any extra points to mesh with what happened during lifepath.

Another facet I know is working in my subconscious is many, many formative years playing computer/console adventure and roleplaying games. I am incredibly comfortable with taking a pre-packaged avatar/character and fully enjoying putting them through the game's paces.

For me, random- or pre-written characters are all about quickly getting into and playing the game. The game is what I'm interested in most, not necessarily the race car or top hat I'm using to interact with it.

Summary: I wish more games had it, either as an option or mandatory.

Specific responses to b_bankhead:

Random generation is a disaster for gamist play because it is inherently going to create unequal characters. Gushing about how this is a 'challenge' or 'liberating' simply doesn't change this fact. Some players are going to start out with unequally effective characters. This is not good for gamist play.

..what? Challenge is part of gamist play! It's for we who want to play a game. And it's part of why it's fun to do gamist roleplaying, as opposed to just playing Puerto Rico or something. It's bragging rights: I took Ruddy the Beggar and turned him into Redhand the Beggar-King. Sure, you had Prince Jaeger and slew the dragon, but so what? You had your ancestral sword and God's own favour.

Also, game balance is for sissies. Not to mention completely irrelevant to discussion (inherent benefits of random character generation), as we will explore next!

Also random systems tended to produce lots of bizarre or inappropriate characters. Again calling the gyrations necessary to accomodate this 'creativity' doesn't change this.

This suggests that "random" is the same as "every possible outcome the universe could generate". i.e. a system based on rolling 1-1000 for everything your character has. What about a range of 4-7 on a roll-under d10 system? What about rolling d6 and the number corresponds to a pre-constructed skill package? What about that 1-1000 system that rewards you with cool gear or relationships if your point total is far below the highest or average characters?

This is what I mean by balance is completely irrelevant to the discussion. Either a random-character-generation game will take this sort of thing into account, or it won't. If it doesn't, chances are random generation was tacked on to a game and not designed with it in mind. It has nothing to do with the concept itself, except that you need to pay attention to how your game interacts with its different parts. Which is.. not exactly unique.

I will totally accept that many people might not like this style of character. That's.. hmm, someone'll correct me: either Social Contract or Creative Agenda. Or both. Either way, that's like saying apples are a bad idea, because some people won't like them. This is the same with your example of the 18/00 fighters: those people didn't want random characters, they wanted their cool Conans and Merlins. That's great, it's awesome. But, again, all it means is those people did not want random characters. Can you really slight the random character concept because.. someone didn't want to use it?

I put forward that your many people who hate random character generation do not hate it because it is somehow the tool of the devil; they think it sucks because either that generation method was internally incoherant with the game (playing dungeon-crawling adventurer heroes who don't have better than 5 in any stat doesn't exactly work) or they had their heart set on playing Conan, got stuck playing Stable Boy Pudge, and couldn't get over it and advance the character (for any number of reasons, including social and mechanical). Their negative experience is with the game, and the random generation is just the fall guy.

[Eero Tuovinen]

I'm a big fan of randomness. My overall theory of roleplaying considers the System only in the terms of oracle systems - it's all about setting limits and giving direction for imagination. Most historical oracles from throwing bones to I Ching have been unforgivingly random.

Actually, I'm so big a fan of randomness that not only most of my character creation is random, much of my game play is, too. Lately I've bypassed the whole hassle of adventure creation for my fantasy adventure game with certain kind of customized random encounter tables, for example.

Controlled randomness is a vital part of design, you could say that complimented by bound customizing (like what's done in HQ) it's all there is to roleplaying.

[jdagna]

For me, there's one simple reason I'll take random generation whenever possible: the characters come out more complete and more real.

If I sit down to do a designed character, I come up with exactly what I expected to.  It's an interesting character, sure, but it's still basically two-dimensional.  Everything fits my original vision, and for that very reason, the character can't ever be more than my original vision.  I have good visions, don't get me wrong, but I'm still a human being and inherently limited.

When I sit down to do a random character, the dice almost always deliver up some surprises.  A scientists who's not bad in a fight if he has to be, a soldier with great physical toughness, but no willpower, a charming leader who has absolutely no clue what he's doing.  I could certainly have sat down to design any of these characters, but by having to explain the quirks, they take on a third dimension.  They are real people, not game constructs designed to do x, y and z.  In a point-buy system, many of these characters would be deemed inefficient and a waste of points.

And that brings up the game balance issue, which is a complete lie.  Point-buy systems have NOTHING to do with game balance.  I played GURPS for years, and discovered that hard-core GURPS players see character creation as half the game.  The challenge is to get the best (i.e. least-balanced) character despite having the same number of points to spend.  If a newbie and a 10-year veteran player both design soldiers, I'll guarantee you that veteran's PC will mop the floor with the newbie, even if the newbie gets more points to spend.  How many of us here already know that Intelligence and Dex are more valuable to sci-fi GURPS characters than Strength and Health?  Even though they don't cost more.  Where's the balance?

Or how about my college "detective campaign"?  I spent a lot of points on investigation, interrogation and political contacts, thinking that these would be useful.  My roommate said the CIA wanted to kill him and his crippled sister and then dumped all of his points into shooting.  During the campaign, the CIA and the sister never showed up once... and I rarely got to use any of my investigative skills or contacts because all of our "cases" followed this model: receive an anonymous tip on location of bad guys, kill bad guys, find clue.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  Sure, this is the GM's fault, but at which point did the system help make these characters equal?

Now, I'm not saying that point-buy and designed character systems are flat-out bad.  They certainly fit well with some play styles and gaming groups.  To each their own... but for me, even a poor randomized chargen beats a well-done choice-based system.

[Simon W]

Yep,
I need to add my vote for random character generation, for essentially the same reasons as posted above. I made the main character generation rule for It's a Dog's Life to be random, but have included an optional 'point-buy' system in the 2nd Edition, just to cover all bases. For Dreamscape (forthcoming) it is even more appropriate to generate stats randomly, but again, I have decided to pander to players who hate this and have optional point-buy rules too.
It probably doesn't hurt for most games to give both options, to be honest. However, I think for some types of game random generation works best and for others the opposite is true. I just can't think offhand of specific examples.

Simon W
http://www.geocities.com/dogs_life2003/

[efindel]

Something that I haven't noticed anyone mention so far in this thread is that there are degrees of random generation.  It might be good to distinguish what is randomly generated about a character.

For example, many "random" systems randomly generate attributes, and stop there.  Other "game stats", such as class, skills, race, etc. are left up to player choice.  That choice may be somewhat restricted by the generated attributes, but it still exists.

Some randomly determine other "game stats".  For example, the original Top Secret system randomly determines what "Areas of Knowledge" (skills) a character has, and randomly determines their ratings in them.  I don't have any of them here to refer to, but I remember some of the Palladium systems "officially" working with random generation of race and class.  The Arduin systems have a set of tables for "special abilities" depending on character class.

Lastly, and what always annoyed me the most, some systems randomly determine factors that aren't actually used in the game, but help to define the character.  E.g., AD&D had random generation of character height, weight, and age.  Original Top Secret randomly determined height, age, and whether or not the character needed glasses/contacts.  I recall the Palladium games randomly determining alignment and having a random table for insanities.

Most of you are probably talking about random attribute generation, but the term "random character generation" makes me think of the horrors of those systems where class, race, skills, etc. are random.  

There are also degrees of randomness -- e.g., the difference between the classic 1st edition AD&D "roll 3d6 for each attribute, in order" and "roll 3d6 six times, place the scores in the attributes you want" or "roll six sets of character stats, choose which set you want".  Different methods have different characteristics.

Some systems have "whiff-proofing" built in.  E.g., "reroll all 1's" when generating AD&D characters.  I've also seen systems where if the total of the character's attributes was less than a certain threshold, the player could start over.

I recall some systems where attributes were randomly generated, then totaled, and the player then got some points to distribute -- the lower the total, the more points the player got.  This provides some whiff-proofing and some player choice.

At any rate, what I'm trying to get at is that a blanket statement like "random generation is good" or "random generation is bad" seems to me to be ignoring the huge amount of variation in what "random generation" is.

[madelf]

Personally I'm a big fan of random generation at character creation (the full-scale kind) with point-buy modification as the game progresses. The best of both worlds (IMO) it gives you the challange of playing a character you might not have thought of, while allowing you to tweak the character as you like after the fact. (I also like playing with pre-generated characters and making them my own, to the point where I've been known to swipe an npc out of a module and make it my pc)

Sidestepping the precise topic a bit (though I think it's related enough to be pertinent), I believe the majority of gamers actually prefer guided (if not actually random) character generation more than they think they do. As evidence, I offer the number of popular games using classes, templates, package deals, or whatever the new word of the day is for "here's a character you can play using only minor modification rather than starting from scratch."

[timfire]

The only thing I'll add is that, IME, random chargen creates a different experience than... umm, 'player-chosen' chargen.

'Player-chosen' chargen makes play about doing the thing you want to do.

Random chargen makes play about conforming to this PC/role that you didn't invent, and trying to give meaning to that randomly generated PC/role.

Either is 'better,' just different.

[Cup of Iron]

Consider that if I want to play a particular type of character (which is the usual argument for the use of choice-based character generation) I need to place my points "correctly", so that once in play the actual character effectiveness in particular categories meet my expectations of the character's effectiveness in those categories.

I find this bit interesting. What do you mean by expected effectiveness?

I think the answer to this is more telling that the rest of your post.

[Ben Lehman]

I think that the false-dichotomy in this thread is stunting it a bit -- random vs. point based.  This is not all there is to a character generation system.

For example, there is also the "one from column A, one from column B" sort of character generation.  Sadly, in many previous examples (RoS, WoD, etc.) this sort of chargen is also combined with an often complicated series of smaller point pools, but there is no need for things to be like that.  I feel sort of bad using my own game as an example, but in Polaris, character generation is "Choose two traits (from a list) and one name (also from a list.)"

Speaking of names, that brings up another type of character generation -- decided.  For instance, when I run D&D games, I often let the players simply decide what their attributes are.  No points.  No dice.  Just whatever they want.

I think that all character generation systems involve one or more of these elements, but usually several: Fortune, Points, Choose From List, Free Choice.  Are there any others?

For example, D&D is all of these in some aspect: (Random for attributes, points for skills, choose from list for feats, spells, race and class and free choice for height, weight, age, name, background and appearance.)

Sorcerer has three of these: Points for attributes, Choose From List for descriptors and demon powers, free choice for Kicker, names, background and demon.

I agree with Raven that Fortune is often overlooked in modern game design as a character generation technique.  But are there limits to that?  Is purely random chargen fun?

yrs--
--Ben

p.s. edit: Just to tie this back to the original thread topic, I think that "choose from list" in particular has the ability to eliminate "bad choice" in the same way that fortune can.  Especially if the list is small.

[Callan S.]

Sounds like a feature pointed out as a bug.

System mastery (there's gurps example is in this thread) is a gamist prize. It's more than character development, it's a way you yourself have improved in skill with the activity in question.

Getting what you want is a skill like it is in sport, where you want to get a certain effect but have to play and practice to get it. The sport isn't broken if you don't get it straight away.

Basically sounds more like a simulationist desire (I want to explore a hero who is just like so and so) clashing with a gamist design (outside of its nar bits, TROS is quite gamist).

I mean, random stats? As someone else said, a 2E D&D hero with 5 strength doesn't suit gamism...but to explore that purely at an imaginary level there's quite a lot of interest there I can see. But tactics wise, screw that!

[xiombarg]

Speaking of names, that brings up another type of character generation -- decided.  For instance, when I run D&D games, I often let the players simply decide what their attributes are.  No points.  No dice.  Just whatever they want.

Right. I'd like to note in passing that Pretender does this, and quite successfully, I like to think.

[ffilz]

Hmm, I have mostly abandoned random character generation because of the wiff factor. I have personally played too many characters who were randomly generated who had nothing they were particularly good at. To me, it is not fun to be playing a character that almost might as well not be there. As a GM, I noticed that with random generation, I kept escalating the bar that random rolls had to meet to not be considered a wiff and be re-rolled.

I did explore using random generation to allocate from a fixed pool, but I never really achieved a satisfactory result when working with attributes. My idea was to randomly distribute "10 points" worth of attributes (or whatever). Of course this does still have a wiff factor if different combinations of those 10 points can be significantly different in effectiveness. Depending on the system, all attributes being close to average could be ineffective, or having one attribute extremely low could be ineffective.

I did have better success with randomly assigning skill levels. For the longest Traveler campaign I ran, after determining how many terms the PC had served in pre-play, the player rolled on a table to find the distribution of skill levels. Some characters would wind up with a few really good skills while others would wind up with a broader range of skills (but still some good skill levels - no one could wind up with 1 level in every single skill which probably wouldn't be very effective in play).

Now I could see taking Ben's point of pick one from column A, one from column B, and one from column C, and randomizing those choices and having a workable system.

But you still have some potential sources for problems. What if random creation creates a strong-dumb character but the player really is tired of playing such? What if random generation produces 5 doctors and no starship pilots?

Increased realism was brought up as an advantage of random generation, and that is valid to a point. The validity ends when there is a selection mechanism. Sure, only one in a million people might make a good startship pilot, but if the premise of the game is that the players are operating a starship, then they will have that one in a million person as a PC. Of course that selection mechanism should function in a player choice system also. Once the starship has a pilot (and perhaps a backup), there shouldn't be any more pilots generated (and we saw this in my Traveler game, people tried to come in with new pilots when there was already an overabundance of pilots, and the existing players said "No, we can't use another pilot, why don't you play a doctor?" This happens all the time in D&D ("We already have a wizard, we need someone who can fight.").

So one way to do random generation that produces a "complete" group of PCs if such is necessary to the game is to put each important ability on a card and then deal the cards to the players. If there are several tiers of importance, one could make several decks (column A, colulmn B, column C, etc). This way the starship gets a pilot, a doctor, a science officer, a marine, an engineer, and a merchant, but with three players, the six roles could be divided into 15 different sets of pairings (if I've done my combinatorial math correctly). Of course more possibilities are possible if there are some columns that don't have any required abilities. If you have a column with fewer required abilities than players, there are lots of ways to solve that. For example, you deal everyone one card. If all of the required abilities got dealt, you're done. If not, everyone who got a required ability sits out, and each remaining player in turn discards their card and draws a new one. Rinse and repeat until all required abilities are drawn.

In all cases, I feel that it is required that the generated group of characters both be believable, and provide close to equality of play value (whatever that means to the particular group of players). I think system choice can helo in the latter and setting choice can help in the former.

Frank

[TonyLB]

I don't think the enthusiasm is for randomness when a certain result is "required" (i.e. a high strength for the warrior you've decided you must play).

If anything, what gets me excited about random character generation is that it can force you to question whether you really must play that warrior.  In 2nd edition D&D, in many groups I played in, if you rolled a five strength the answer was not "My warrior can't live with this", it was "I guess I won't be playing a warrior then".  Is it possible to do that badly in all stats?  Yes, but exceedingly rare.

What was more common was to see things like "God, another weakling with high intelligence?  What are we, a pack of wandering scholars?  Hey... actually... that's a sort of neat idea.  But we've got that one guy who's so perfect for a thief... what would a thief be doing trailing along with a group of bookworms?"

One of the notions I've grown fond of here on the Forge is that a GM should give players a choice, and be absolutely okay with whatever way they choose to make that choice... it makes the game better, even if the players do everything exactly the way you'd have done it yourself.  I think that if you treat the dice as a player then random character generation encourages the same sort of openness... you come into the process of making a character with a healthier attitude, even if the dice then roll exactly what you would have chosen yourself.