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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gorgon Zee" data-source="post: 7566847" data-attributes="member: 75787">> Interestingly, when introducing kids to roleplaying, I have found that no matter what system you start with, they start thinking in terms of aspects and have to be trained if the system uses skills. As an example, I ran D&D for some kids and a typical conversation would go:I (and my son) have run a few different systems for the church youth group. I've been running BIG EYES SMALL MOUTH (2nd ed) with them for a while now, which is a classless system -- you pick up skills and special powers using point buy and it's the same thing. Even though there is no official "class" or  "main aspect" they still think in those terms.I'm running in S. John Ross's Uresia setting (high recommend for an angst-free, anime fantasy world full of sailing, romance, pirates, cat people, maps and cooking) and my players are running a pretty random selection of character types -- I have a ghost who has two different sets of powers depending on whether they possess their recently acquired dead body or not, a robot, a Barry Allen/Flash clone, a half-tree druid, a dwarven axefighter, a demon and a few others. Pretty much every session the younger kid playing Barry Allen tries to use a skill they don't have because "that's what Barry can do". The dwarven axe fighter has expressed frustration that they don't know anything about smithing (because all dwarves do) and so on. So I think this is not really a class issue. The class is a stand-in for the "main character concept" in many games; certainly in my long and happy history playing D&D if you asked a random person to describe their character, the first aspect they describe is almost always the class. In fact, I think that is the appeal of a class-based system -- the class is a main aspect that makes it easier to decide (or be told!) which skills and abilities to take. Even in purely skill-based games (e.g. Call of Cthulhu) a nice feature is a "package" of skills that describe some aspect of a character ("profession").Thinking back over the many, many characters I have created, in many, many systems, I think my though process does go like this:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Find some idea / concept / mechanic / media that inspires me</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Think of a summary statement that describes them</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Considering the system, map those to most suitable high level choices -- main aspects, classes, professions, packages</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Flesh out details with the stats /attributes / skills / abilities / powers that make sense</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Come back after a few sessions and ask the GM if I can change some of the above because the mechanics didn't match the concept the way I thought it would</li> </ul>So, my D&D 4E character was Sigbert. I was excited about playing a competent D&D fighter who knew some magic for the first time ever so I went for "barbarian fighter forced to learn magic", which leads to fighter class, multi-classing wizard with brute force based weapon abilities and stats and skills to support it.For ICONS my concept was a scared teenager (I usually play assertive, pro-active characters and wanted to try something different) so took some aspects that supported that and then chose powers that didn't involve direct conflict, leading to my new super-hero: The Mouse.For Call of Cthulhu, we were asked to play Miskatonic students in the 1930's, so I went with an immigrant communist agitator -- I'm pretty sure that with those descriptors, most people would come up with a similar set of skills to the ones I took.Maybe it's a simplistic model, but the Numenéra style description "I am an immigrant communist agitator who studies engineering" or "I am a barbarian fighter forced to learn magic" seems to cover the basics of what I need to define a character, and the rest is just matching against the system.</blockquote>

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