Some 13 years ago, fueled by folks who were looking back at original games, I decided to abandon D&D 3.x and start playing original games, and playing them more as originally written with random character generation and all the warts. Sure, I’ve made SOME changes, and if someone really is unhappy with the character they get, then they can roll another (I actually welcome folks rolling several Traveller characters and picking their favorite). I have found gamers quite receptive to this.
The folks that were particular about it would just roll until they got what they wanted. <shrug>
My problem with original D&D was that characters with several really lousy scores should never go into adventuring, because the first fight they are in will probably kill them. When AD&D came out, and into 3.x series, the game was balanced more towards optimized characters and sub-optimal builds (esp at higher levels in the 3.x trees) were very far behind their optimized peers in being able to survive things and take out a decent portion of the foes. That's not to say I'd expect equality, just variation within a modest frontier. I watched people try to play these variously deficient (some even by design in 3.x.... you could have a concept that the game wasn't made for and your build would not synergize feat upon feat upon class feature...) characters, many got frustrated with the relative performance in the battles and a fair whack of them died where their tougher companions did not. (Which is kind of a Darwinian way of saying 'don't go into dangerous places, harsh climates, dangerous terrain, and fight if you aren't made of the stuff of ancient heroes'.
In Traveller, the penalty for not being very competent (once you avoided the Scout career) wasn't so pronounced.
I like evolved characters. And I enjoy playing characters that go directions I don't expect sometimes (such as when I blow an enlistment, get into something else, and then perhaps into a second career... leaving a character nothing like the one I wanted to create). The 'brownie point' mechanism in expanded MT generation let one have some control or input into the outcomes, but not so much that there wasn't variance between characters. In fact, with more careers, MT generation offered up a lot of choices (esp if you had some of the ones from mags and supplements and such).
I also prefer player-generation of character choices - do I reinlist? What branch do I want to try to get into? What sorts of assignments would I work towards? What skill table? When do I feel age catching up with me? Do I try to follow a second career?
That whole experience makes the character feel evolved, esp when you include the 'events' from some 2d6 or d66 tables - life and professional events, what happens to you if you blow a survival role, what happens if you totally suck on decoration rolls.... possibilities of prison, discharge, injury, etc.... that all makes for interesting variety in characters.
One reason I left designed characters behind was that it often seemed that players would design some “perfect” character for their interests, and then they would write a short novel for their character history. The result often looked like a “done” character who had already accomplished all their goals. I play RPGs not to follow some pre-determined story, but to find out what happens. And finding out what happens is more interesting to me when it includes a random starting point.
The other view to take is that if one has a good idea where one has been and what sort of experiences those were, it informs the play of the characters just as our past informs our current behaviour. We are shaped by our past. That says nothing about what we may do or who we may become in the future.
I've written long histories (or had none at all). The long history part sometimes was there to explain an odd combination of careers or racial choice.... and then to explain why I left the sanity and stability of living in a nice place to go off into the wild black yonder (or in D&D terms, why I left the village to head out into what stands a good chance of being my first and only adventure....).
There are pros and cons to both approaches. Having an informed view of your character means that you can act in fairly consistent ways that represent their values and view of life (cultural, personal, whatever) which I often see as lacking in characters with no particular background (they tend to appear rootless, inconsistent, and opportunistic - which is okay for some settings and some groups but not for all). The downside can be if the player makes their story up without much reference to the world or setting or with an eye to who the other team members are so that they create a real difficulty in play. We did have one PC in D&D that was LG and was heavy on the L part of that.... he would not allow the group to do sketchy things. The work around was usually to assign him a task to keep him elsewhere while the dodgy stuff was being transacted.
Shaping characters and their past lives by revelation at the table can work, but you can run into two problems there: Some folk just never seem to engage with blank slates and they just kind of limp along without filling anything in or even developing much 'character' for their character. Or you get the other side - the folks that LOVE creation and will create some exciting but often not well-fitting stuff as you go. The GM exists to deal with that, but if you have to deal with it session after session... it can get problematic.
In the RPG-ish wargame 4:16, the characters reveal bits of their past in 'flashbacks' and I think you can have one per night. That was one way to handle a 'create as you go' but not 'the most energized player creates most of it'.
My own preference is to create a character very different than me (Elf, Aslan, Noble, Doctor, Wizard, etc) but then try hard to figure out beforehand how they'd see a variety of aspects of life and use that to inform my play.
I'm also a big fan of the players building characters together and contributing something to another character (every character creates some aspect of another's character or backstory in a ring layout...). It could be a connection, it could be an unplanned event, it could be a quirk or behaviour drawn from an experience ("Hates small spaces as he was trapped in a collapsed hull section for days").
Both approaches can work, both approaches can have troubles, and both approaches can be mixed in some proportion. That diversity is pretty handy if you are trying to match a game to a player group and/or a particular setting/feel too.
But I get that others enjoy more control over their character. If you’re that type, you probably won’t like my games and that’s fine. There’s plenty of folks running games that you will enjoy. The more game styles out there, the more folks who will find the hobby interesting. And we all get to talk about our hobby together and almost always find something in common and benefit from some of the same games and supplements.
I totally agree with that paragraph down to the punctuation!
TomB
Frank
All the online chargen prgs I've encountered also allow the user to pick skills.
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I had not seen “pick your skills” until the past few years poking around the boards. No one who has played my games has expected to pick their skills (well, I suppose some might have, since my gaming is either play by post or Roll20, I don’t require people roll their characters up in front of me).
For the way I play, I don’t think I’d like having players pick skills, it would seem to lead to too much optimization.
Frank
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Rolling to determine skills is probably, in my experience anyway, one of the most ignored rules.
Just about everyone I know/knew much, much preferred to pick their skills.
Even the few Trav computer games (the MicroProse ones were my favs), let you pick skills.
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