Re: Character Generation

From: Trotsky <TTrotsky_at_...>
Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2006 17:51:54 +0000


Gazza Sturgess

> But given
> that I'm using to making Champions characters, I'd certainly do the
> tiny amount of arithmetic Jane suggests here. I wouldn't call it
> munchkinism personally; I'd call it "character optimisation"
> , which is
> indeed DISTINCT from the "story needs" of the character, but not
> OPPOSED to same.

Yes, 'character optimisation' seems a fair term for it. And I'm pretty lousy at it :)

>
> That said I'm not convinced that it gives you much of a mechanical
> advantage anyway; I'd do it because I would enjoy it, rather than for
> a significant mechanical benefit - and I'd also help out any of the
> other players that were less mathematically inclined, if they wished
> it. (There's a core of 4 of us in my group, but we expand to as many
> as 9 in some games, and any of the 4 of us are EXPECTED to help out
> with this sort of thing in character generation, regardless of the
> game we're playing).

Which seems a good approach. In something like GURPS or Champions, I'd know to ask for assistance (although only as a result of experience - just reading the rules wouldn't lead me that conclusion). In HQ, not only wouldn't I, but if somebody offered it, I'd turn them away, confident that it wasn't necessary. Although, judging from Jane's post, its possible that that's a misplaced confidence...

Ashley Munday:
> - Choose my keywords
>
> - Scribble a narrative or pick my 10 abilities
>
> - Add 10 to the ability most directly applicable to
> the thing they do well
>
> - Add to 2 to 5 abilities from the list or narrative
> that support the thing they do well
>
> When I'm GMing I tend to impose the same rules, it
> saves all the faffing about.

I'm unclear as to how you'd impose that, but leaving that aside - what if its not possible to describe the character a player wants using those rules? I ask, because I can't envisage a character that I'd find at all interesting to play that could be described like that - I absolutely *hate* playing characters with 'one thing they do well'.

Jane:

> I'm being presented with limits on how many points I
> can have, and how I can spend them, and the result
> will control what my character can do, later on.
> "Obviously", this is a mathematical puzzle in
> optimisation, which "has" to be solved before one can
> proceed.

As I suspect your quote marks indicate you realise, what's obvious to you is deeply opaque to people like me. My brain just doesn't work that way. Not only wouldn't it occur to me to do it, but, until you pointed it out, it would never have occurred to me that anyone else might either...
> The concept of "pick the one skill you're really
> interested in and slap ten on it" will never work for
> me anyway, because I'm never going to come up with a
> character so simple that they've only got one
> big-number skill.

This is very much the case for me, as well. I'm pretty sure that I didn't put more than +4 onto any of my current character's skills when I designed him. Certainly, his highest starting ability was 1W. (Now, after about ten sessions, its reached 4W, and I have a couple of other abilities over 20 as well). When I designed him, this just seemed the natural thing to do, and I assumed everyone else would do much the same - it didn't take long for me to realise that apparently this wasn't so!

With groups of increasing size, this sort of thing could become a problem. If I decide to emphasise an ability by spending a whopping 4 points on it during character creation, that's not a problem if nobody else has a similar skill. But as the group gets larger, it becomes increasingly likely that somebody else will have at least a fairly similar skill, and may be much better at it than I, because they spent more points on it, added some abilities that could be regularly used to augment it, and so on.

Come to think of it, I'm pretty poor at augmenting in general - even if I do have an ability that can be used to augment something, I rarely think to do so. For example, my character has the ability 'Focused Will' as part of his keyword. When, in my Lunar campaign, one of the characters there happened to have the same ability, I noticed that she used it to augment all the time, and it always made sense. I kept thinking to myself 'ooh, I must remember to do that sort of thing next time I'm playing'... but I never do! Of course, to cap it off, there's the fact that constantly being told by other players 'you could augment that with X, you know', would rapidly get irritating, and spoil my enjoyment of the game!

In HeroQuest, its a lot easier for a good GM to get around problems like this than I suspect it would be in (say) Champions, but they're worth bearing in mind, nonetheless.

-- 
Trotsky
Gamer and Skeptic

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Trotsky's RPG website: http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/

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