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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ovinomancer" data-source="post: 8122316" data-attributes="member: 16814">We don't actually know this.  The responses to my asking for specifics here are cagey, to say the least.  There seems to be no specifics on what the GM's role was as far as conversation goes and there's also a lot of switching between pre-0 and 0 as far as discussion on the issue goes, so I'm not at all certain that your postulation is correct.  It would seem very odd to me that the GM would announce a character creation mini-game, ask that players not create characters prior to session 0, and then immediately engage in assisting character creation.  The response so far is that the GM was present -- which is a very careful thing to say.Was it?  I missed the clarification.  Are you certain this is correct (I looked back and didn't find it, but I'm not rereading the whole thread).Roger that, and then what happens?  Do you insist that the Pepsi now must be consumed and nothing else could be?Your last is stretching too far.  I'm not interested in leveraging the players' connections unless they put them in play themselves.  Instead, if Character A has a strong bond to Character B, it improves play.  If the relationship is a mercenary one, it really doesn't.  Now, I'll grant that many players establish this weak bond and then do the "but we're PCs, so of course we help each other" thing, so sure.  But, that's playing against or orthogonally to the establish relationships rather then with them.I guess you like stories where the characters are just hired hands and don't really have any reason to care about each other, huh?  See, hyperbole and strawmanning other's arguments doesn't really work very well.  I prefer connections to be actual connections rather than mercenary transactions.  There's zero reason for the illusionist character to care about his hired guard except that the hired guard guards them.  This isn't a character connection, it's a hireling.  It's only the "fellow PC" meta-connection that lets this kind of thing function.Sorry, but did "town guard" come with anything related to the town you were the guard of?  Or was it a label, and you didn't know your way around, or the major NPCs in town, or have any relationships to the town or duties or responsibilities to it?  "Town Guard" is generic right up until you pick the town you're the guard of, and then it's specific.  There's nothing in the presented backstory that makes it unique at all to Saltmarsh.  Town guard at least has to pick a town and then gets tied into that -- it's not nearly as generic as you're trying to claim.Yes.  Motivations are what drives the character to action.  If money is the motivation, then unless the reward is commensurate with the risk and better than what you can do elsewhere, then it's not a motivation to do anything.  "Money" only works if you're engaging the meta-motivation of "playing the GM's adventure."  You're essentially arguing for employment of meta-motivations instead of character motivations.Absolutely, and I have hella fun games.  Because it's not really demanding that much -- make a character that engages and is engaged by the themes of the game.Sorry, did you think I made that claim?  I didn't.  Each character in my game already had a backstory when they showed up.  This wasn't an argument for not having any player backstory prior to the mini-game to tie players to the themes of the game, but instead suggesting that they not be fully locked in so they can adapt to what happens during the minigame.  If the players wanted their backstories integrated into the mini-game, that was up to them in how they framed their scenes or in how they narrated the results.  I couldn't care less.  My point was that if you did show up with a fully formed character, then you were going to have issues because you couldn't fully control the outcomes of the minigame -- you would end up friendly with one faction and at odds with another and you couldn't predict that.  Further, if you had a fully formed character, with the BIFTs all set up, then you'd be out of room to add Bob the Fighter as your best bud because of the cool thing you did with each other raiding a Dustman outpost for burial trinkets because you were hired by a mage to do it.  The goal of the minigame wasn't to thwart character building, but to engage the characters deeply in the setting and each other from the start.</blockquote>

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