Does anybody have any experience with using randomly dealt cards for character creation ?

I am partly inspired by some recent posts on Vincent Baker's blog around the Cheap and Cheesy adventure generator.

The basic idea is : A character is not defined by a bunch of stats on a character sheet, but by some cards (In my case, index cards with a couple lines of text on them). The cards corespond to items, allies, natural talents, etc. This is meant for quick one-shot adventures where you don't want to spend too much time preparing characters.

It's left to the player to determine exactly what it means, but they should be should be fairly unambiguous (This isn't Tarot, though it can be an inspiration). For example:

Years of slavery as a gladiator, fighting for the pleasure of lords.
An aristocratic duellist, arfully wielding a deadly rapier.
A native of the underworld, comfortable in lightless caves.
A priest, master of ceremonies and church politics.

Zzeena the dark elf, born a slave. However her stunning duelling in the arena of Melfict led her to be the champion of her city, and she was admitted into the ranks of the priesesses of blood.

I just bought Everway, but I haven't played it yet. But I've read that it can have problems of cool characters that have few story interconnections. Some thoughts I had for creating character interconnections:

* Players share 1 card with each of their neighbors?
* Players have group their cards into past, present, and future/destiny cards?
* 1 card shared by all players? As a shared future/destiny for all characters?

Check out S. John Ross' Risus, which uses a simple description character creation as you referenced above.  In fact, your first quote there could actually be a nearly-complete Risus character.

Players come up with these character aspects themselves, but I can see GM-suggested (or mandated even) biographical snippets coming in handy, especially to lend some party coherence to a group. 

Are you thinking that such a deck could be "stacked," so to speak, by the GM, to ensure a certain trait or aspect that an adventure might revolve around?

Ooh, Risus, I'd read that one some time ago, never got to play it though. It's neat, and should work pretty well with random index-card aspects too. ("Aspect" ... hmm, that's a good name, I'll stick to it.)

And yes, "stacking" the deck is easier, you just have to take out or add in cards. You can control what kind of magic (if any) will be available, introduce items / backstory elements specific to the adventure, etc.

Chris: I'd thought about having one card shared by all characters too (Maybe by having the group vote between three card before creating their character). Having a group tied by something (all being monks/priests/inquisitors, all being dwarves, all being magic users, all being travelers, all being from the same family ...) helps the game, even when the link has nothing to do with the plot (Though you can probably always find a way to fit that in). Sharing cards between neighbours, or maybe just allowing two players to declare a card as "shared", would be interesting too.

Regarding shared Aspect(s), I think that it is worth asking what you want to provide with this interconnection between characters. Are you hoping to establish character relationships prior to game start, so you can avoid going through the (usually stilted) characters-meet-fight-befriend intros? Or are you going to use it as a pre-game situation to spur immediate activity in-game?

I feel it would be more useful, perhaps, to do something with card interconnections. Say you come up with a hundred general Aspects. First, you would want to sort them by tropes: tech, magic, ranged combat, close combat, high society, low society, artisan, administrator, horrific, fantastic, etc, etc. These tropes become whole "sets" of cards that a GM could leave in or take out of a "deck" from which players of his or her game draw. Thus, if we want high fantasy, we keep in magic (but pull tech) and we keep in all the combat (but maybe pull all the horrifying) cards. Players pull; characters are defined as before. These tropes are what define the game world and the characters' potential place in it for the GM's story purposes. (Note: These also provide opportunity for Expansions: Aspects of Fantasy, Aspects of Sci Fi, Aspects of Horror, etc. And mixed-genre play, as folks shuffle together different sets. AND cool art opportunities, with each card in a set, between the sets, symbols to help users easily sort out a set... basically everything you can do with CCGs.)

Further, you can then build "party relations" OR "pre-game situations" with color coding: randomly (yes, randomly) color each card. Then, after players pick their four Aspects, they reveal the color of one of them (revealing the Aspect is not required yet). For every color that any players share, those players may choose to have the colored Aspects as a positive or negative connection. If it is positive, they reveal it to each other and (amongst themselves) decide how it plays out in backstory: the way(s) that the two Aspects interrelate with these characters. If they choose negative connection, they both reveal their colored Aspects to the GM, who must work out what is the rivalry, issue, conflict, or past grievance they share.

For example (yours above) if Zzeena's "A priest, master of ceremonies and church politics" Aspect is, say, green and Bobbot's "Working man, with tough hands" is also green, they could:
a) make it a positive connection, show it to each other, and maybe decide that Zzeena likes a man with big, strong hands... *wink*
b) make it a negative connection, show them to the GM, and the GM maybe decides that Zzeena somehow slighted (maybe even unintentionally) the hard working man while he was doing some work at the temple, and he has looked for a chance to "get even" ever since... *shudder* (Obviously, the GM reveals this to only Bobbot... hmm, or maybe NOT so obviously; maybe it's GM choice if/when he reveals it... to EITHER of them... mu-ahahahahahaha.)

Thus, you can get--in the same "draw five, pick four" process--character relationships (plus and minus) and overall party options (genre conventions, power level, social class availability, etc).

What do you think?
David

Your choice of resolution mechanics may also help you decide what abilities are important for a character. For example die pools or stats vs. areas of ability like you'd find in a free-form game.

If you go with numbers and keep the computer involved you can have a range of ability ratings for each card randomized a little further. This avoids min/maxing. If you care.

Otherwise give 'em a time limit on card swapping so if they want to min/max it's a game in itself.

Oops, I forgot to add one thing about Aspect colors: all players who are unconnected after the first round or color announcement must reveal a different color of one of their remaining Aspects. The point is that all players' characters will have SOME kind of connection to SOME other character, which will eave them together into a "party".

Hmmm... though the negative connection I used as an example might mean that Bobbot is not "in" the party but perhaps shadwoing Zzeena (who presumably IS in the party) at game start.

OK, so it needs work: that's whatcha get for...

2¢
David

I like the random character positive/negative connections! However, one problem I can see with the "randomly coloured cards" system is that it's almost independant from the aspects themselves - having the player roll dice and find a link between players who got the same roll would give roughly the same result (oh - except that the "coloured cards" system links aspects to aspects, not just players to player. But then you could have players chose an aspect, then roll their dice, etc.).

One alternative would be to have each aspect card include one "relationship". "Years of slavery as a gladiator, fighting for the pleasure of lords." could have "The one who helped you escape.", "An aristocratic duellist, arfully wielding a deadly rapier." could have "The man who killed your father, whose hand has six fingers", etc. This could be done by having one relationship on each card, and having the player decide which one(s?) apply to which player (The rest probably applying to NPCs); or by having the aspect cards also say whether that relationship applies to one or more other players, or to none.

I'll have to try that, see how many aspects can be linked; if it doesn't prove rich enough, I'll try something with colors, or similar.

This would increase the "story/character depht" value of each aspect, so it'd be better to reduce the number of aspects by player.

Oh, and for the "trope" categorization - I've already started doing something like that, dividing aspects into "Magic", "Combat", "Social", "Travel", and "Special" (=misc.), plus some more themed ones in "ArabianNights". And, subdividing those tropes (useful name!) into "Job/experience", "Items" and "Gifts" ("natural powers"). It can be a good way to easily builind settings by mixing things together, but I don't think you could make that many cards that can be used both in SF and fantasy, or both in fantasy and modern settings (And that's just using text (I'm sticking to low-tech pen-on-index-cards for the foreseeable future), it'd be even worse with pictures). It should work fine for sticking to basic fantasy, with topical variants (fantasy races or not, arabian flavour, oriental flavour, celtic flavour, steampunk ...) (Or SF setting, with variants, or modern settings, with variants, etc.).

flammifer wrote:
(oh - except that the "coloured cards" system links aspects to aspects, not just players to player. But then you could have players chose an aspect, then roll their dice, etc.).

fl wrote: One alternative would be to have each aspect card include one "relationship"....
I'll have to try that, see how many aspects can be linked; if it doesn't prove rich enough, I'll try something with colors, or similar.

fl wrote: This would increase the "story/character depth" value of each aspect, so it'd be better to reduce the number of aspects by player.

fl wrote: ...but I don't think you could make that many cards that can be used both in SF and fantasy, or both in fantasy and modern settings (And that's just using text (I'm sticking to low-tech pen-on-index-cards for the foreseeable future), it'd be even worse with pictures). It should work fine for sticking to basic fantasy, with topical variants (fantasy races or not, Arabian flavour, oriental flavour, Celtic flavour, steampunk ...) (Or SF setting, with variants, or modern settings, with variants, etc.).

I agree that "one predefined connection per aspect" would get repetitive pretty fast. And yeah, if colors are chosen so that there may be a connection between cards of the same color, it works better than pure randomness (and is less "flat" than what I proposed). I'd been thinking of associating an element to each card, so it could work with a magic system (Maybe the magic a player can do depends of his aspects related to magic powers AND of the overall elements his aspects have, a priest with mostly fire aspects would be different from a priest with mostly fire aspects; it could also determine things like magic resistance); re-using it for "connections" could be neat to. (Players all choose an aspect, those with an element in common are connected). Or by having small icons/keywords (Maybe several per aspect), and match those to determine connections (the icons or keywords would be more "abstract" and tarotlike here, but that may affect the way the players interpret their character. Not sure if that's good or bad, once again it adds too many things.).

(This gets me thinking - I could make this *entirely* about magic. But that's going on a tangant. Still, it could be a way not to have to worry too much about base stats ...)

One problem with the colors/elements is that if the players discuss  and trade the aspects they want to chose, they'll know each other's aspects' possible matches, so having them chose secretly losing a bit of it's flavour (if they chose randomly, however ...).

I still like the idea of having an aspect shared by all characters. Having all the players explain how they relate to that aspect may almost automatically have those relationships interact with each other. And, most aspects are interesting enough as "collective aspects" so that it's not much a problem to junk those that aren't (or to just hope players don't chose them).

if you make the players assign each Aspect to past, present, or aspiration. You seem to treat most of your examples as past Aspects (or just-become-present). Suppose that one could assign each Aspect to one of those three time periods in the character's life? All four in past: complex history. All four in present: a youth (or amnesiac). All four in aspiration: compelled by many (conflicting?) drives. Most would have a couple in past, one in present, and one as aspiration (I figure... seems like a "normal" distribution for a richly developed character, to me, given four Aspects).

One predefined Connection per Aspect ... Aspect Elements

having some aspects explicitly about [past, present, future]

negative Aspects... Defects

revenue model

Three things, two of which are blatantly self promotional, so skip 2 and 3 if you hate that crap.

1. Everway is great. If you can get it on eBay, do so. Even if you never play it, reading the rules is a very good way of getting an entirely different "zen" of RPG into your head for future cognitive rumblings.

2. A few years back I designed a card-based game/activity for generating stories, called TaleWeaver. You can learn more about it here:http://www.tinkerx.com/index.php/taleweaver/ It's for sale on Amazon, but if you'd like, I'd be glad to send you the PDF files for the rules and cards via email. Shoot me an email at [email]awhavens@sanestorm.com[/email] if you're interested. While it's not an RPG by any stretch of the imagination, it can be used to come up with interesting back-story situations for games as well as stories per se.

3. While not card based, Ninth Sigil, the current system I'm developing with some friends at www.playbywiki.com was inspired by Everway and is based on "card like" symbols that we've termed "sigils." The idea being that for text-based RPGs, it makes more sense to define characters by "root" ideals than by stats. For story-based games, we feel, the basic decision points of the game should be based on character and plot, and those things generally revolve (in good writing) around choices about what's important to characters, more than who's got a slighter stronger build. Great heroes of fiction aren't remembered by their stats, but by the "nouns and verbs" of their deeds and those of their adversaries.

I warned you about 2 and 3... But check out Everway, even if you don't take a gander at our stuff.

Sorry for the late answer, still my Thesis ...

Anyway:

David: OK, I agree that llowing for some liberty in past/present/future may have some potential. Since I haven't played many really "narrative" games, I can't really tell how it would be. I'd need some testing :P So I may be excessively concerned about "gameplay" balance. However, I've played games where a character had both legs cut off at the beginning of the adventure, so while he was technically "physically inferior" to the others, it also made him more interesting and central to the story.

However, there may be other directions than "time" where an aspect can vary, which gives me an idea ...

What if each cards has *two* aspects, between which the player can chose? Either by having an aspect on each face, or by having a card you can turn around like playing cards - I prefer the first, since there's not much need in keeping aspects hidden here.

So you could have:
- A young and idealistic warrior, with high hopes and a bright sword
or:
- A seasoned veteran, scarred and cynical

- A messenger, that has ridden through all lands
or:
- A book-binder's son, enraptured with tales of travel and adventure

- A high-born lady, expert in seduction and intrigue
or:
- A high-born lord, expert at fencing and diplomacy

- The Gift of Fire - an influence over neighbouring fires
or:
- The Curse of Fire - a burnt and twisted face, and magical fire that can be summoned or will appear with strong emotions [lame description, ok, but it's late]

- Ninja: Not getting noticed, Stabbing people silently
or:
- Pirate: Getting noticed, Stabbing people while laughing loudly
(OK, this last one was just for fun. Could be used, but wouldn't fit with the rest :) )

etc. Now - I'll agree this doesn't have the abstract beauty of "general" aspects that can be interpreted in many ways - past, present, future, etc. but I still like the idea; plus it plays well with the "one card shared by all the group" thing - they can chose either aspect of that card, and it still maintains some coherence through the group. Plus, it may allow to skip the whole "pick n+1 cards and keep n of them" thing while still giving the players enough choice. Oh, and as the gift of fire / curse of fire card indicates, it can be a way of having handicaps, though those could still be managed seperately. (And, um, among those listed defect types ... I dunno, I guess they can all be used?)

As for open source, collaborative - I'm perfectly willing to share and make this collaborative, like on a wiki or something - what would the "social convention" be? Would it be ok for  me to set up a wiki outside and ask people on the forge to give a hand? I guess the best would be to do it in a thread and copy stuff into the wiki, and encourage anyone to go add stuff to the wiki fi they want too.

playbywiki wrote: 1. Everway is great. If you can get it on eBay, do so. Even if you never play it, reading the rules is a very good way of getting an entirely different "zen" of RPG into your head for future cognitive rumblings.

playbywiki wrote: 2. A few years back I designed a card-based game/activity for generating stories, called TaleWeaver. You can learn more about it here:http://www.tinkerx.com/index.php/taleweaver/ It's for sale on Amazon, but if you'd like, I'd be glad to send you the PDF files for the rules and cards via email. Shoot me an email at [email]awhavens@sanestorm.com[/email] if you're interested. While it's not an RPG by any stretch of the imagination, it can be used to come up with interesting back-story situations for games as well as stories per se.

playbywiki wrote: 3. While not card based, Ninth Sigil, the current system I'm developing with some friends at www.playbywiki.com was inspired by Everway and is based on "card like" symbols that we've termed "sigils." The idea being that for text-based RPGs, it makes more sense to define characters by "root" ideals than by stats. For story-based games, we feel, the basic decision points of the game should be based on character and plot, and those things generally revolve (in good writing) around choices about what's important to characters, more than who's got a slighter stronger build. Great heroes of fiction aren't remembered by their stats, but by the "nouns and verbs" of their deeds and those of their adversaries.

flammifer wrote:
As for open source, collaborative - I'm perfectly willing to share and make this collaborative, like on a wiki or something - what would the "social convention" be? Would it be ok for  me to set up a wiki outside and ask people on the forge to give a hand? I guess the best would be to do it in a thread and copy stuff into the wiki, and encourage anyone to go add stuff to the wiki fi they want too.

flammifer wrote:

flammifer wrote:
As for open source, collaborative - I'm perfectly willing to share and make this collaborative, like on a wiki or something - what would the "social convention" be? Would it be OK for  me to set up a wiki outside and ask people on the forge to give a hand? I guess the best would be to do it in a thread and copy stuff into the wiki, and encourage anyone to go add stuff to the wiki fi they want too.

Wiki created :)