I’ve got an idea for a game with a character pool where during the course of play any player can choose characters that are on the table as the main focus a scene.  Originally, I thought of having a prime character for each player, and (possibly after a game mechanic) other players could use that character to drive part of the story.  But with such a large investment in one player’s character, a game might transform into an “I’m fucking over your character” / “I’m fucking over your character” pissing contest.  So now I’m thinking of a group character generation method.

Before play, each player creates the basics for a character: name, background, how he or she got into the situation, perhaps a trait or two.  We pass the character sheet around the table and each player reads what has already been written, then writes another trait or agenda or secret or modification to the background for the character. The character gets back to the first player who gets to veto any addition (or suggests additions to veto to the group, who vote to keep or remove the addition).

As an example, Adam creates a character (Zeke), giving him a brief background as a recovering alcoholic construction worker.  Barbara adds “Is in love with his brother’s wife”.  Chuck adds “Used to be an EMT before he got burnt out.”  Dan adds “Wants to kill his boss”.  Ed adds “Works for his brother”.  Adam reads over the character and doesn’t like that everything is riding on the brother as boss angle, so wants to veto Ed’s suggestion.  The others vote, explaining why they think that Zeke’s love for his brother’s wife and desire to kill his brother would make for a good story element or not.  The vote comes out 3-2 to remove, and Ed’s addition is removed from the character. 

As luck would have it, in our example game Chuck winds up liking Zeke as a character and uses him as the main focus in most of his scenes while Adam focuses on Yolanda, the character Dan initiated that just turned out to be Zeke’s sister-in-law.

Any thoughts on this method of character creation?

-Thomas

Thomas --

I think that this is pretty cool and fruitful, but I also think that a group veto may do more harm than good.  As long as everyone involved is approaching the creation without malice, I can't imagine a situation where a trait would make the game *less* interesting.

yrs--
--Ben

Hey,

Group veto sounds harsh to me too, why not use a resource to decide in such situations? Like everyone got 20 points and each point means a trait, removing a trait costs 5 points for the first player (that's the player who created the character if I understand right) and 10 points for other players or something like that. The price for removing the trait should be high, so whoever made the trait does feel that the other player deserved to remove it.

Hope this helps somehow.

Adam

Universalis has a "Challenge" mechanic that if I remember right requires you to give coins to buy off dissent.  But it explicitly allows for a "Negotiation" phase prior to a formal challenge so that potential sticking-points can be finessed by players modifying their input to avoid triggering a Challenge.  This is something you might be able to work in.

I think there's a place for a norming mechanism, probably one that is designed to reel in extreme outliers - like if there is complete consensus that an addition is not appropriate, it must be revised.  Having such a mechanism may make player input freer, which seems paradoxical at first, but the whole point is to enforce a group vision, so having social constraints can be reassuring.  It probably will never be invoked, but if it ever is, it is needed. 

I totally don't get the concern.

You're talking about just making up characters, right?  Not making up a character that is particularly yours, but just making up characters.

So if Adam doesn't like how Zeke worked out ... who cares?  He doesn't have to play Zeke.  It's self-correcting.  The people who thought it was really cool to have Zeke hate his brother/boss can play Zeke, if they think it's so cool.

For any trait, no matter how nonsensical, at least one person thought it was cool enough to add to the character. If they want to play the character so created, more power to 'em, says I.

For the most part, agreed.
In my own Imp Game, this sounds fairly similar to how players create their Imps: each player fleshes out the basics, and the group adds additional information, and it works out fabulously. My game, however, is a comedy, which means almost anything is seen as fodder for game play. But, the concept works very well in play, and can be tweaked - the group, in Imp, agrees on the additional traits, which means some kind of concencus has to be reached. And the player has a recourse if there is a trait they absolutely don't like; after a while of playing, they can spend accumulated points to change the group trait to something new.

In your case, with a character pool, I agree with Tony, why does it matter what the starting player things about the final character? If everyone is drawing off the pool of characters, he could simply skip the character he doesn't like and go for one he does.

I dunno, Tony, the guy who made Zeke the Jedi in your Star Trek game is going to introduce him into play whether you like him or not.  I can think of circumstances (convention play, pick-up games) where you probably wouldn't just reach over and slap him in the head like you might in a weekly game or something. 

Tony said:

For any trait, no matter how nonsensical, at least one person thought it was cool enough to add to the character. If they want to play the character so created, more power to 'em, says I.

Rockin'. This is a very powerful way to harness the creativity of the people at the table, as I've seen over and over again with Burden creation in Carry.

I'm curious about the rest of the game. Like, what is it about? What do the characters do? All that jazz. I suspect that linking the situation at hand to character creation would cut down on the presence of "objectionable" entries.

Arturo wrote:
Perhaps the example provided by Thomas is soft. But there could be situations where one player introduces traits or relationships to a character which other players may feel inappropriate to the setting or to the expected tone of the play. In these situations a system should be provided.

Tony -- You're at the far end of a conceptual shift that says if you tell players to bring on the coolness, the coolness will come.  What I think Thomas could be worried about is that someone's contribution (well-intentioned or not) to a character could "spoil" a character for someone else:  not just that the character won't be fun to play anymore, but that the character's mere presence in the setting is discomfiting:  "Dude!  Your guy's a child molester!?  That's not the game I signed up for!"

The general principle isn't "Don't play characters that suck."  That's easy to implement rules-wise.  The principle that's looking for a systemic implementation in this game is "Don't make characters that suck."  And there are lots of ways that that could be implemented, but they're all variations on some group decision-making process.  Consensus.  Majority Vote.  Character "Owner" Fiat.  Appeal to the GM.  The extent to which pre-decision discussion ("Wouldn't it be cooler if...") is allowed or encouraged is also something that rules of the game could address. 

So there's something worth talking about here, which is what mechanisms of player interaction need to be stipulated so that optimal coolness-of-character can be reliably achieved, without removing the ability of players to introduce challenging character tweaks that ultimately will probably be the source of the most interesting stuff in the game.

Nathan wrote: I'm curious about the rest of the game. Like, what is it about? What do the characters do? All that jazz. I suspect that linking the situation at hand to character creation would cut down on the presence of "objectionable" entries.

Tony, I was thinking more in the line commented by Bill. Things that, once introduced, one or more players may feel disruptive for their play, independently if they play that character or not.

Thomas, probably you may go with a collective character creation without worrying too much about such disruptive problems. Trust the players. People want to enjoy and, in general,  they will fairly collaborate on it.
If you decide to include a control system afterwards it should be very easy to integrate it anyone in the game.

Arturo

Thomas, I think most of these spoilery concerns would be sidestepped if, before group character generation, there was a short discussion about what kind of game the people want to play.  Call it group campaign generation.  So first folks talk about, "I want to play survivors on a derelict ship trying to survive long enough to be rescued when they coast into their destination system, like the derelict leviathan from Farscape" or "I want to be the last few survivors after a horrific war that employed scorched-earth tactics, with the frontline long since past us by."  You hardly even need to provide rules, just talking points, and you'd be astounded at how well the characters made thereafter will synch up.

Whoa, hold up, guys! Thomas just gave us the answer to the issue.

a group of people that band together after some sort of event.  The characters are isolated with little or no chance of a rescue or reprieve in the immediate future.  They would be harrassed by a hostile, outside force, but the main conflict comes from the fellow survivors they meet (and each other).  Together, they have to deal with the other characters and other non-player characters, all who may have agendas that are radically different from their own.  ...  It's based on every zombie movie. 

Thomas,

I have done group character creation except using art pieces. I find it helps sharpen the imagination and is helpful for players new to role-playing as well as for younger kids (hey, art is fun!). I'll caution you that I used this for a light high fantasy game not for a post-apocalyptic zombie game.

Like you say, each player begins with a concept in the form of a quick color sketch (color helps bring out the kid in all of us, though for your world maybe a simple pencil or charcoal sketch would be better). It's not about creating a masterpiece, and you may wish to set a time limit (say 5 minutes).
Then each player passes their sheet to the player on their right, and everyone draws (or writes) something new on the character sketch (sheet) in front of them. This process continues until the character sheet return to their original owners.
The original player then incorporates everything on the sketch into a pitch to the rest of the group.

Would this meet your need?