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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shin Okada" data-source="post: 5353479" data-attributes="member: 1956">While part of me welcomes the introduction of character themes as one of generic rules, another part of me feels some uncomfortableness about that news.I like systems which encourages to add some background and story behind each PCs instead of making them plain lists of numbers and abilities. At the same time, I hate the rules or frameworks which players must accept pre-generated archetypes. Or rules or frameworks which pre-generated archetypes are simply better than those which each players creates.For that reason, while I am adopting background rules in PHB 2, I am banning FR or other setting-specific backgrounds. I want my players to be creative and give them freedom to make up his or her own hero's story, without being handicapped by having inferior background bonus comparing to ones of others.So I usually encourage "make up your own background" method. Just tell players to make up and declare some interesting background or trait which reasonably support one of the three basic benefits of background rule (another language, another skill in his class skill list, or +2 to one skill).For that reason, I don't like Darksun character theme much. For me, it seems to be too limiting and not allowing players to make up his PC's theme freely. I will welcome similar rule set more if there are rules which allows players to create their PC's them by themselves, and which are not inferior to the pre-generated ones.But if it is hard (or impossible) for a player to make his own character theme, or simply choosing one of pre-generated character theme gives better game stats, I will hate it. IMHO, that is not a system which encourages creativity, quite opposite.</blockquote>

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