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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Prisoner6" data-source="post: 4644419" data-attributes="member: 54021">One of the people I DM with uses has created a character background document which contains a lot of questions designed to focus character creation.  Questions include things such as "What were your parents professions?" or "Who was your best childhood friend?"It's not exactly integrating lifepath into character creation, like say Traveler, but I view that as a good thing.  Just having the questions there forces the player to address issues that one imght inclined to gloss over.  As a result the PC tends to be much more rounded, deep, and coherent.  On the other hand, the development is left completely up the the player - in the form of questions - which means that the PC turns out just the way one wants.Here's my point:  when designing a PC, we usually have some concept in mind - let's say I want my character to be a Scholarly Paladin (never mind what that ism it's just what I want).  Using a formal set of rules to generate my character's background could allow me to create the character I want, but in practice it really only provides opportunity to detrail my desires.  I might blow a die roll, or follow a flow chart down a path that really isn't the way I want to go.  Suddenly I no longer have the character I want because the rules couldn't accommodate my imagination.(I remember *wanting* to create a certain character in Traveller and having to create character after character after character to have none of them work out because I wasn't getting the right rolls.  Of course now I would just say "screw it" and create the character I wanted, but that futher illustrates my point.  One ultimately ends up doing an end-around the integrated character generators to get the characters one wants. So what's the point of the intergrated generator?)So trying to get my ramblings back on track with the thread:(a) building one's own set of rules for charcter background generation is doable(b) such a set of rules needs to start in the middle, so that the end character concept isn't junked.(c) I've never seen a system that allows for (b), so option (a) is probably the best.</blockquote>

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