I broke a bad habit

[Ry]

Hey, here's a habit I'm proud of breaking:

Asking too little of my players.

I'm just back from a 3-hour character creation session where we really didn't do any stats. This is for game I'm writing for a rotating player base (so I'm doing both GMing and game design to get it in place). My first inclination, of course, was to say "sure, just have a character statted up and we'll start the adventure!" - but I didn't do that. I said "Character creation is going to be important so we'll do a session of that only."

I had players create Drives (3 things that really make their characters tick, and which play to conflicts in the game - 1 Drive had to relate to another PC), as well as 3 Allies, 3 Contacts, and 3 Enemies. That took up the whole 3 hour session, and so we didn't actually play.

It was AWESOME. By the time they were done I had Sea Elven kings, a Warforged-crafting Lich, gnomish intrigue... the list goes on and on. Most importantly I have PCs that have big signs on them that read "Mess with me like so." Now when these players drop in I'll have tons to work with to make the game good for them.

Acting like I bear sole responsibility for the fun and creative work going into a game actually would have made it less fun for the players today. Even if they killed some goblins.

 

[Fifth Element]

Deleted. Thread title changed - post no longer relevant.

 

[Piratecat]

Not trying to be a pain, but the thread title seems to imply that DMs who don't do this are simply not asking enough of their players.

Please don't poop on a positive thread. Far better that you just move on to a different thread instead.

And Ryan, neat idea. It sounds like a great way to get player buy-in into the world. Can you give some examples of the drives that people created?

 

[kensanata]

When I started Shackled City, my little player guide also had the following on character generation: "Provide a reason for working together with at least two other characters in the party. Explain why another character not in the party might follow in your footsteps should you fall." I added this to avoid party break-up and to have an in-game reason for a rescue party. At the table I did a little question/summary thing for the other players. "So Borg, you're a butcher turned monster hunter... I guess you must know Wim, since his father has been an engineer for underground architecture. Who else? Zach is the son of the undertaker, perhaps there's a strange connection? And Fenyael the elf is not from Cauldron... Hm... Then again, Ariel is half-elven and took nobility... Maybe she's interested in Fenyael because he's a potential lead back to her mother or something? And who would inquire about Fenyael? Ah, one of the librarians is a remote relative. Cool..."

It didn't take a whole session, but it did take a few minutes per character.

 

[Captain Tagon]

Reminds me a lot of Burning Wheel without all the mechanical stuff attached. I like it.

 

[Psion]

Reminds me a lot of Burning Wheel without all the mechanical stuff attached. I like it.

I was going to say reminds me of Spirit of the Century.

Or for that matter, S. John Ross' Troikas, from the other side of the screen (3 of X, 3 of Y...)

 

[Ry]

I DID attach a few mechanics, I'll post about the whole process in tomorrow sometime since Pcat asked and I'm working on the draft anyway (the method = Raising the Stakes II for anyone who knows the stuff in my sig).

 

[Neil Bishop]

This is a fantastic idea. My players are rather lazy and expect me to generate their backstories after they describe the character concept... and I have facilitated that laziness. As per your title, perhaps it is time to break the habit.

 

[Ry]

Not trying to be a pain, but the thread title seems to imply that ...

That's not what I meant at all. So let me amend the thread to say "break A habit"

It was a habit of mine that was a detriment to my game in my space with my players.

 

[jdrakeh]

Nice. I haven't seen anybody talk about using the 3x3x3 method of fleshing out characters (i.e., defining 3 Allies, 3 Contacts, and 3 Enemies) since I first read about it on the Firefly forums a few years ago. There was a brief discussion of the idea over at The Phantom Zone but it didn't seem to go anywhere (and, of course, those forums are now gone). I used it in my C&C game in the Summer of 2006, though never really got a chance to implement it in actual play. I like the addition of Drives and am glad to see that more people are making use of this tool. Very cool.

[Edit: Incidentally, was it you who posted about 3x3x3 over on the Firefly forums?]

[Re-Edit: I guess it wasn't, though here's a linkhttp://web.missouri.edu/~heivilinj/Firefly/WRESerenity-3x3x3.pdf to the 3x3x3 sheet used by that poster.]