100% Subjective Character Creation

[Ron Edwards]

Hey James,

If you were really into Gamist role-playing, then they wouldn't be stigmas and concerns - they'd be plain old rocking fun.

What you're dealing with, possibly, is fear of Gamism - or perhaps fear of what I'm calling Hardcore Gamism, which is to say, bringing the Social Contract itself into the arena of challenge/competition.

That fear is so over-riding in some role-players that they will design whole game systems devoted to containing or excluding it, usually to the detriment of whatever it was they were hoping to enjoy in the first place.

Best,
Ron

[M. J. Young]

Multiverser's character generation is of this free-form sort. Most player characters are supposed to be accurate representations of the players, so the identity of the player becomes the limiting factor, to a significant degree (if you're really an expert marksman, where are your medals?). However, it's entirely possible to play the "not I" character, and of course the referee constantly creates NPCs as adjuncts, antagonists, and others, who are not based on real people. The process is the same: create the concept of who this character is, and then translate it to game terms.

I had posted something on this somewhere, but I can't figure out how to search for it right now. More recently I organized those thoughts into an article at Gaming Outpost, http://www.gamingoutpost.com/GL/index.cfm?action=ShowProduct&CategoryID=54411&ProductID=71050&publisherid=54849">Game Ideas Unlimited: CharGen, but you have to subscribe over there to access it.

One thing I suggest is having each player write a character concept, something general (maybe with a word limit), such as

Flash Gordon, all-American football hero type big on courage, action, and charm.

Dr. Zarkov, brilliant eccentric scientist whose theories, once thought nonsense, are proving true, and who has had to develop many skills in a variety of technologies to pursue his work on his own.

Dale Arden, beautiful socialite with surprising spunk and inner strength as well as keen insight into how others think.

Then pass the papers to the left, and let the next player at the table figure out how to convert that character into game terms--what skills should he have, what should his abilities be, how do I make this into what that brief says within the terms of this game? Some characters will wind up with high attributes, others with lots of skills, each with strengths in the appropriate area.

For a completely different approach, check out whatever you can find of Legends of Alyria. In this game, the characters are created cooperatively by the entire gaming group, and only after they've been created and assigned their general position in the starting point of the game do the players decide who plays which of them. Thus everyone is interested in making all the characters worth playing, because at the time the characters are being created no one knows who will play which one.

Those are some ideas.

--M. J. Young