You've Created A Bad Character. How, why and whose fault is it?

[payn]

What I really want is the players to work together to create A GROUP, rather than a collection of PCs. It only happens rarely.

Really depends on the game. Though one of my favorites is Traveller. Chargen is both random and allows for a lot of group cohesive decision making. It's one where session zero character creation night is actually fun to be at from start to finish. YMMV.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I discovered that you need lower bounds, too. M&M does a better job of this.

Probably formalizing them is better, but my point was that the Rule of X passively did that if the player is paying attention at all. Like I said, if the top is 24, its not a big ask to wonder if a 16 is a good idea.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Why does it matter who is to blame? Who is "responsible"?

Because it tells you where you need to go to address the problem.

 

[Thomas Shey]

In my experience, people usually just want to get to playing. Almost every time I start a new campaign or am going to run something, players end up creating characters beforehand even if I explicitly state I want to do it at Session Zero. it is maddening.

Some people just flat out want more time to fiddle with things and take time to digest options and such. They're just going to prioritize that and there's no help for it.

 

[R_J_K75]

In my experience, people usually just want to get to playing. Almost every time I start a new campaign or am going to run something, players end up creating characters beforehand even if I explicitly state I want to do it at Session Zero. it is maddening.

This is what happens in my experience too. At session zero we might throw out some ideas for an adventuring party but before we can come to an agreement people just start whipping out dice and start making random PCs, and then I get inundated with 10 questions at the same time and 5 people trying to all get an answer. This happens at least every five minutes. It's really annoying.

What I really want is the players to work together to create A GROUP, rather than a collection of PCs. It only happens rarely.

This is really aggravating as well because there's no comradery and in the end we end up with a group that has no realistic reason to even be adventuring together. I've also found that this leads to players not really caring if their PCs live or die because...kill off Bob 1 and replace with Bob 2, insert into party, no questions asked. Hell I've had players just erase the name on their last PC and write in a new one, OK I'm back.

 

[R_J_K75]

Chargen is both random

I do miss the randomness in chargen in D&D. It made the characters with good stats special and you glad to get one and fought like hell to keep them alive

 

[Alzrius]

I haven't read through the whole thread, but I'd think that if you created the bad character, then you're the one responsible for having done so.

Maybe not wholly responsible, like if the GM didn't give sufficient information about the setting or something like that, but I'm pretty sure that one way or another it's at least partially your fault.

 

[Reynard]

Really depends on the game. Though one of my favorites is Traveller. Chargen is both random and allows for a lot of group cohesive decision making. It's one where session zero character creation night is actually fun to be at from start to finish. YMMV.

One of these days I need to give Traveller and honest try. it is one of those games from early in the hobby I just never played for whatever reason, despite having gone back and tried a bunch of the other foundational games.

I think part of the reason is that it is misspelled.

 

[payn]

This is what happens in my experience too. At session zero we might throw out some ideas for an adventuring party but before we can come to an agreement people just start whipping out dice and start making random PCs, and then I get inundated with 10 questions at the same time and 5 people trying to all get an answer. This happens at least every five minutes. It's really annoying.

This is really aggravating as well because there's no comradery and in the end we end up with a group that has no realistic reason to even be adventuring together. I've also found that this leads to players not really caring if their PCs live or die because...kill off Bob 1 and replace with Bob 2, insert into party, no questions asked. Hell I've had players just erase the name on their last PC and write in a new one, OK I'm back.

This is why im a big fan of player's guides for campaigns. Yeah, that means a lot of Paizo APs, but i've come to even write them for my homebrew games as well.

 

[payn]

One of these days I need to give Traveller and honest try. it is one of those games from early in the hobby I just never played for whatever reason, despite having gone back and tried a bunch of the other foundational games.

I think part of the reason is that it is misspelled.

Traveller has a lot of misspelling