Character Points I - Physical Description

[Michael Morris]

I'm going to have to agree with MortalPlague on your comments about playing the opposite gender, you come off as far too negative about it, with the inference that it can't be done well ever, I would agree that you have to be mature and careful with it, and consider why you want to play a female/male or it can come off as comedic/insulting.

In the games I've played, players have mostly been male, and one or two of us playing females changes the group dynamic.

Cross-gender play is a topic I'll probably revisit - it can definately fill an article by itself. I mention it in passing here to note that it is a potential trouble spot. That doesn't mean it will be a trouble spot. I have myself played female characters and my two novels have female protagonists.

Indeed there are a couple items touched on here that can be explored more in depth later.

 

[Hecatol]

Very nice article - sure there are sources with similar material, but it was well written and could help get people's imagination going if they're stuck during character creation. Keep them coming!

 

[tek2way]

I rather liked it. It may seem to be "old hat" to some veteran RPers, but most of the folks at my table could pick something up from it. Anything to get them away from, "my character is six foot one, two hundred thirty pounds, black hair, blue eyes," and so on. Heck, it gave me a couple of ideas I'd not thought of before.

I look forward to the next installment.

 

[Agamon]

Good read. Not useful for myself so much, but I will direct the players of my game to it.

 

[Roadkill101]

Character descriptions are nothing new to me, I've been using them in my games for a long time.

There was one point in the article that I found useful. The bit about not getting into too much detail, in case the character leads an unplanned short career. This was something that had not occured to me before. I'm not big on having a lot of details, just enough to get a good idea of what everyone else see's but I can think of several instances where some extraneous details could have been skipped over. I'll be on the lookout for too much/many detail(s) from now on.

 

[lurkinglidda]

Take the face from the female in the first image, add the hair from the female in the second image and you have a rendering of LurkingLidda.

I'm a little spooked out.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

This thread is to discuss the character points article. Poll forthcoming to see what you guys thought.

What article? Where? I pity any newbies who see this and want to read it.

 

[Michael Morris]

What article? Where? I pity any newbies who see this and want to read it.

The article linked at the top of every page of this thread?

 

[pawsplay]

One quibble: every time an article on gaming mentions race, the first time "race" it is used it should read "fantasy race" or something along those lines, to be clear we are not talking about real life racial theories.

Why? I remember an ill-fated thread on another board titled, "What Race do you Hate Most?"

 

[Scotley]

I enjoyed the article. I too found the list of descriptive language for hair of particular interest. I want to thank you for being willing to put your work out there where it can be a target of abuse. Lord knows you get enough of that when something on the tech side of the boards goes wrong. One of the things I find really lacking these days is good content. I first came to these boards at the dawn or pre-dawn of 3e for more D&D info. I loved hitting the news page because there would be links to lots of content from around the web. In recent years that has really dried up. Sure we can find out about the latest book and the new edition, but I love good fan created material. I for one am very excited that EN World 2 seems to be designed with an eye towards bringing back more content. I love the weekly spotlight on fan created material on the news page and now articles as well. I just hope some of the negative feedback in this thread doesn't run off other potential authors. I'm glad you shared a little of your history to let us know why your opinions are valuable as opposed to many of the naysayers who's only claim to authority is 'because they say so'. I eagerly await your next installment.