Creating a Character VS Discovering a Character

I'm old school. I prefer to roll dice and discover a character by what the dice tell me. I much prefer a system like 1E AD&D where you random roll stats and then see what type of character you have qualified to play. You can't play a Paladin unless your rolls qualify.


Classic Traveller is another game I love, with a character generation system that is both fun and brilliant. Life doesn't always allow you to make lemonade. You may have wanted to be a film director, but, instead, life turned you down the road of being a computer technician. That's how CT character generation works. And, it generates some extremely interesting characters.


I love rolling dice and listening to them--figuring out what they mean. I love to figure out "How did this character come to be this way."


To me that's much more rewarding than systems like 3E D&D where a player can play any class of character, right off the bat, as there's no requirements (which is not always true, especially with prestige classes).


There are a significant number of people, though, on the other side of this who argue, "If I want to play a Paladin, then why can't I? I want to have fun, too! And, I want to play a Paladin, regardless of what I roll!"


To be fair, I can see that point.


What about you? Where do you stand on this issue?

Typically I come to the table with an idea for a character already in mind, usually 2 or 3. They're simple, so they're flexible. An idea for a ranger could be a rogue, or a fighter, or even a barbarian. An idea for a cleric could be a druid or a paladin. But there's limits.

I usually like to have an idea of how I will the role-playing before I start roll-playing, so I generally do not like to randomly arrange scores. I tend to get bored of randomly created characters and hold little investment and therefore little value in them and thus, have little fun with them.

I stand on both sides of the issue. Sometimes I want to roll and let the dice provide the inspiration for the character, and other times I have a specific concept in mind and hope the dice allow me to realize it.

There's a charm to both. I love digging out WFRP 2e and just random-rolling every stat (& background, previous career, name, every last single thing).. then trying to figure out who that character is. But there's also a charm to seeking out something in particular, and then growing it organically, like, say, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire.

The charm of the random is that it can make you go places you had no idea you liked. The charm of the not-so-random is to seek something in particular out, and try it.

I like both depending on what i want.

There's times where i want to look at all the options in a ook and test out an idea, and creating a character alpows me to do that. As I've heard said, it gives the players a game outside the game. Othertimes it's great to roll something and see what you get. You often end up with a combo you never would have.

Now that i think about it, i might have to randomly roll a few d&d characgers and see what I'll make. Dragonborn sailor sorceror anyone?

Actually, I do discover my character while building it, without the random rolls. In 3e and PF, exploring the options would help the character grow in my mind.

In games like FATE, characters are discovered as I write them up. So while randomly rolling is a way to discovery, it can certainly be achieved through building too.

For one-offs or similarly short games, I'm happy to go with random or pre-gen characters, but if I'm going to be playing a character for a long time, I want it to be more hand-crafted, someone I can feel invested in from the start.

I currently have active campaigns involving different forms of PC generation and development:

4e D&D: PCs are complex builds, refined by the players over time as levels are gained;

Burning Wheel: PC gen is a complex player-driven process; but PC advancement depends heavily on the actual situations the character encounters in play (its improvement-by-doing, with some resemblance to classic RuneQuest), and so the player doesn't have unfettered control over how the PC develops. This is a deliberate feature of the game.

Marvel Heroic RP, and Cortex+ Fantasy Hack: these systems involve pre-gens (officially published for the Marvel Heroic game; written up by me as GM for the Fantasy Hack), but the players get to decide how their PCs develop as XP are earned - so, for instance, Nightcrawler in our game has lost his faith and become a much darker/sinister character, and has also developed skill using the Silver Samurai's sword.

Classic Traveller: PC generation is largely random, but not utterly (the player gets to try and enlist in a particular service; and gets to choose among different tables for rolling up various aspects of PC gen). There is not a lot of PC development, but the player does get to choose where s/he wants his/her PC to develop - but then has to make a roll for success, so advancement is not guaranteed. To date, at least - this campaign is still relatively young - I feel there is probably a bit less player-PC identification in this system.

These different systems are elements in different RPGing experiences. I woudln't say that any is better or worse in some absolute sense.

Maxperson said:

I stand on both sides of the issue. Sometimes I want to roll and let the dice provide the inspiration for the character, and other times I have a specific concept in mind and hope the dice allow me to realize it.

Click to expand...

What he said.
And if the dice DON'T allow me to make a certain concept? Oh well, I've got other concepts.

Cripes said:

The charm of the random is that it can make you go places you had no idea you liked.

Click to expand...

Nice.