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?
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?