The PC you want vs the PC you get.

[Rechan]

The biggest restriction I see is not necessarily imposed by the system.

It's imposed by the group.

You might want to play a rogue or a ranger, but, "We don't have a cleric/fighter/wizard" or "We all ready have one of those, we need something else"
"Okay, I guess I'll play the missing one".

You certainly CAN play what you want, instead of one of those roles, but it's going to be a whole lot of inconvenient that you didn't tow the line.

I see this play out all the damn time.

 

[Nagol]

The biggest restriction I see is not necessarily imposed by the system.

It's imposed by the group.

You might want to play a rogue or a ranger, but, "We don't have a cleric/fighter/wizard" or "We all ready have one of those, we need something else"
"Okay, I guess I'll play the missing one".

You certainly CAN play what you want, instead of one of those roles, but it's going to be a whole lot of inconvenient that you didn't tow the line.

I haven't experienced that either as a player or GM. Most of the time, the characters were made in an information vacuum -- each player made the character he wanted to play. Occasionally, the group would discuss how the characters would know each other and what the players wanted to play, but it didn't seem to heavily affect their choices for classes. I remember one group in AD&D 2e where everyone was a Thief or multi-class Thief and a different group where all characters save one were Clerics. The oddball was a single-class elven Fighter.

 

[Ambrus]

In my years of gaming, I have learned to start with these restrictions - before I ask what I want to play, I ask what I reasonably can expect to play.

My approach over the years has been much the same. Of late however, I've found myself pushing the envelope of character creation in an exercise to develop characters that more closely match my initial inspiration. In my current tabletop campaign for instance I'm playing a 5th level halfling with five different classes with two prestige classes to come; all in a bid to create the character closest to my initial concept. I also incorporate flaws and traits (from Unearthed Arcana) and class abilities variants (from various sources) wherever possible. Essentially, I ignore the fluffy descriptions of the various materials and am using them together to effectively create my own new character "class".

I guess my question is, are the three or four restrictions (as eloquently summarized by Nagol and Umbran above) and the character design process they engender a good thing or merely a necessary part of the game that we've all come to accept out of necessity? Is it desireable or does it point to a fundamental flaw in the game system? Are players able to conceive of a character beyond those limits or have we learned to not bother trying?

 

[Set]

I have a ton of ideas that I would love to play, but, upon slamming into the rules and setting, invariably find out that I 'can't do that' or that 'it doesn't fit,' and that I'd enjoy the game more if I wasn't banging my head against a wall trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

And so I read over the rules and setting and find something there that jumps out at me. I end up making lists as I read through a setting book of ideas that just leap out at me as cool (one Greyhawk product mentions that in the lands of the Snow Barbarians, there are occasionally pale albino warrior maidens who tend to be loners, associate with wolves and are most typically rangers or druids, that just screamed out 'cool!' to me, and that went on the list of characters to someday play in that setting. Each setting has throwaway lines like that worked into it that similarly inspire, and some, like Al-Qadim, are *dripping* with inspiring character ideas).

Happens in RPGs, happens in online games. I joined City of Heroes and immediately found out that I really couldn't mimic some of my favorite superhero characters from Aberrant, GURPS Supers and Villains & Vigilantes games past, but that the world itself, the various locations, power groups and organizations, and the powers that were available, lent themselves to dozens of awesomely fun ideas. Instead of being the lame-o who tries to squeeze Drizzt or Wolverine or Chuck Norris into some other setting, or some other rules-system, it's far more fun for me to find something in the setting that oozes coolness and screams 'play me, fool!'

Whether the world is the Zakhara, Trinity's 2120 future, Golarion, the old school World of Darkness, or the Scarred Lands, each world has it's totally cool areas, races, factions, etc. to play with.

And yeah, it's pretty much a given that you have to consider the other people at the table. Moody loners who contribute nothing to anyone elses fun and monopolize gametime with their solo-exploits, and restrictive moralists who try to enforce some sort of code of behavior on everyone elses characters because of their horribly selfish team-unfriendly character choice are right out. I happen to love playing healers, whether Clerics and Druids in D&D, or Defenders, Controllers and Masterminds in City of Heroes, or Shamen, Furies and Defilers in EverQuest II, so I've never felt like I had to 'take one for the team' by playing a healer, but there are times when the character I really wanted to play turns out to be redundant, grossly overpowered compared to another player, or grossly innappropriate for the adventure at hand (sure, you can play an Aquatic Elf in the Desert of Desolation or a Specialist Conjurer in the World's Largest Dungeon, but why the hell would you want to?).

At that point, I just break it down into a subset of character ideas that both suit the team / adventure / game at hand, and that I would like to play. Fortunately, the list of characters I would like to play is extensive, and I went to Xendrik Expeditions at GenCon with eleven different characters, representing all factions (and a few undesignated ones that could plug into any faction), written up at both 4th and 6th level (since I wasn't sure which one I'd want to play in the higher level game). Sure, it takes 15 minutes to bang out each character, so I probably blew a lazy Sunday afternoon doing them up, when I could have been doing something equally trivial like watching a couple of episodes of Heroes and getting worked up over how freaking stupid all of the characters are, but I enjoyed the process, and it gets faster as you go (and adding 2 levels to them to make the 6th level versions is ridiculously fast. Cut-n-paste, up some numbers, get another feat, add better gear and good to go).

About the only time I end up playing something I don't like is at conventions, where I traditionally try out games I've never played before, and end up at a table with some experienced players, who snatch up any pregen worth playing and leave me with something awful, which I try to remember doesn't necessarily mean that the game system sucks, just because my first experience at the game sucked...

 

[JoeGKushner]

If you don't understand how the game works, then you're going to be banging your head against the wall an aweful lot.

Even in point buy systems, if you try to play Superman right out the gate, you've already gone well beyond your initial point buy in most games.

To me, there are several ways of looking at it.

Most of the time the player wants something that's not going to work because of power level/association. Some of the time its not going to work because the party already has that character concept. Some of the time, if the player is willing to work with the system as written or has a generous game master, the character idea can take wing.

Ironically, the more rules the game system has, the more problems may occur. Once you see power X in one book, you wonder, what can't class Y do that? Feat Z isn't available to anyone but race R. Why?

In the 'old' days, especially with random rolling, character was what you made, not brought preconieved to the table.

 

[Nagol]

<snip>

I guess my question is, are the three or four restrictions (as eloquently summarized by Nagol and Umbran above) and the character design process they engender a good thing or merely a necessary part of the game that we've all come to accept out of necessity? Is it desireable or does it point to a fundamental flaw in the game system? Are players able to conceive of a character beyond those limits or have we learned to not bother trying?

I'm of the mind that genre and thematic restrictions are a good thing in that they exist to provide a common framework and understanding for the players about the campaign and interactions expected from the characters. I also think roleplayers should have a large library of games so as to be able to choose a game engine that has appropriate genre and theme expectations to match any game they wish to play.

Mechanical restrictions are a necessary evil since there hasn't been a game system capable of perfectly rendering character concept and still have game mechanics. A good game engine tries to minimise the turbulence of character design and evolution. I found 3.5 particularly distressing in this regard because so many published prestige class paths depended on non-intuitive early choices.

 

[Pseudopsyche]

As an example of what I'm talking about, let's consider two conceptual races that proved popular enough for inclusion as basic playable PC races in 4e; the dragonborn and the tiefling. I contend that the appeal of these two races are their mythic progenitors; mighty dragons and infernal demons.

For the sake of concreteness, I will respond to your specific example. First, I agree that the appeal of the tiefling and dragonborn races stems from devils and dragons, but it doesn't follow that players must prefer playing devils and dragons to playing tieflings and dragonborn. As a human, I find it easier to play a character that has some degree of humanity, even when I enjoy the infernal or draconic trappings that the humanoid's race conveys.

Second, in practice, the dragonborn and tiefling races give campaigns much more flexibility to start at low levels. If I'm only interested in playing an ancient and powerful dragon, I guess I have to start in the mid-to-late epic tier. As others have pointed out, there are also some social constraints. More fragile races seem better suited to a game built around teamwork than mighty dragons and proud devils. YMMV.

 

[Umbran]

I guess my question is, are the three or four restrictions (as eloquently summarized by Nagol and Umbran above) and the character design process they engender a good thing or merely a necessary part of the game that we've all come to accept out of necessity? Is it desireable or does it point to a fundamental flaw in the game system? Are players able to conceive of a character beyond those limits or have we learned to not bother trying?

Taking the last one first...

Of course we are capable of conceiving a character beyond those limits - we are able to come up with character ideas without anyone ever mentioning what system or power level or genre is to be used. I've seen concepts mismatched to genre and system fairly frequently.

The practical fact of the matter, in my experience, is that one has a whole lot more fun with a character that's developed using the restrictions than one that is "blue sky", and then modified to fit. Maybe occasionally going well outside the box you want brings up some buried brilliance in design, but by and large, I think character design based "use the right tool for the job" approach gets more consistent positive results. YMMV, of course.

As to whether it is a good thing to apply such restrictions, consider the alternative: If everyone in a group really goes without considering any restrictions, you end up with a 1940s gumshoe, an anime-style high-action elf warrior-princess, the demi-dog of sleep, and 375 lbs of sentient navel lint playing in a Victorian-era Britian political intrigue setting. Without any consideration of restrictions, the entire enterprise loses cohesion.

How is the GM supposed to operate (or the troupe, if you are doing more collaboarative work) supposed to get things to flow in a cogent manner if there's no agreement on what kind of characters you are working with?

 

[Charwoman Gene]

If everyone in a group really goes without considering any restrictions, you end up with a 1940s gumshoe, an anime-style high-action elf warrior-princess, the demi-dog of sleep, and 375 lbs of sentient navel lint playing in a Victorian-era Britian political intrigue setting.

That game sounds awesome.

 

[JoeGKushner]

That game sounds awesome.

But it doesn't anser the question of "How is the GM supposed to operate (or the troupe, if you are doing more collaboarative work) supposed to get things to flow in a cogent manner if there's no agreement on what kind of characters you are working with?"

If the setting is set up for it via Rifts, no problem.

If you're playing a realistic WWII grim and gritty setting... well, not so much.