Character portfolios as products

[trancejeremy]

I like books of NPCs, because they often have characters and concepts I wouldn't think of. But I wouldn't want to use them as my PC. Part of the fun of playing is having your own character grow

 

[Goddess FallenAngel]

It's a very neat idea, and my first thought was "How cool!". But my very next thought was "too bad I like coming up with my own character builds." So, unfortunately, I would probably not pick it up unless I needed an NPC for a game I was running, or needed a bunch of pre-gen characters in a hurry. If it was fairly inexpensive, I might pick up a couple just in case - especially spellcasters, I hate building those - but otherwise not.

 

[Zendragon]

only as an NPC book. Things change in a campaign and an initial concept can change through the course of play.

 

[Festivus]

E.N. Publishing tried it with The Ironics, which is a book containing pre-statted PCs of each core class (25 characters in all), intended for quick use in one-shots or convention games.

It never received the level of popularity I had expected. Though it has proven useful when I need to playtest something with minimal work on my part.

Thats pretty much what I use it for too... useful for quick testing of encounters or if I need to drop in a quick character really fast and can't get on the net.

 

[kenobi65]

Much as others have said:

- No interest at all for using as my PC
- Slight interest for using for NPCs

 

[Mark CMG]

For DMs - Good for NPCs in a pinch and for pregens for gamedays and conventions.


For Players - Good for PCs for a quick oneshot when you don't want to spend the time coming up with a mid to high level character. I would be surprised to find that anyone wanted to use such a thing for a campaign game.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

No fraid I wouldn't be interested.

For a PC well the whole point is making your own. For NPCs, just one or a few would be less than ideal. Really what I'd like to see more of from WoTC or third parties is some good solid books full of nothing but pre-gen NPCs lots of them. So that I can flip through to a character niche and skim through to one at the appropriate power level. Something like that would be a useful NPC tool.

Now you mentioned something about art. Not everyone is a great artist, my drawing skills couldn't even manage OOTS. The sort of thing that I'd love to see is character art folios. I'm often reduced to rummaging through art sites looking for character art for NPCs or location. And I'm fairly certain if someone were to put out big folios of character or location art it would sell.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I'm glad I asked before I took out a second mortgage on the house!

 

[ChimericDream]

I'd have to agree with the people above. I probably wouldn't be interested in this if it was a paid product. A custom painted mini is nice, but I could do without it.

Now if you were talking about doing this as a free PDF series, I'd certainly be interested.