"I'm unclear as to how you'd impose that"
Er, it's rather easy - you just say "Here's the house rules for character creation." If someone whinges too much (as one did) I just told 'em if they wanted something else and they could have if if they could come up with something in 10 minutes.
He then goes on to ask:
"what if its not possible to describe the character a
player wants"
The answer to that one is two-fold: I haven't seen it yet and if it is, well, that's life. There are plenty of characters you can't get using the standard character creation rules (try starting as a Rune Lord using the standard rules for example) as well, and this method is really no different.
The central observation that lead me to this method was that every character in every game I've played in or GMed has one or two things they develop to the exclusion of everything else. This even happens in con games where you get a pile of abilities to wade through. People can only assimilate a few quickly so they end up being played as if there were only a few on the character sheet.
Players seem to guide their characters down fairly tightly defined paths of competence. Probably because it doesn't make a lot of sense not to with the rules as written.
Cheers,
Ash
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