Quote from: greylond;519045Yea, that's a personal thing for each player. I'm like many other people I know, including some on the K&Co staff that love going through Character Generation. For example generating a Traveller character is fun for me. Luckily, you can still use the HMb QuickStart Character generation system and have a perfectly playable character. You can download that for free from here;
http://www.kenzerco.com/free_files/HMb/HMb_quickstart_rules.pdf

Yeah, I can see how it would appeal to some people depending on what you like.  I'm very much of the "let's just get this over with and start playing" school of thought, so all the rolling on tables and totting up BP and Honour for HackMaster drove me crazy. I felt like a 5-year-old wanting to throw a tantrum: "Can we just start playing please??"

Then either use the K&Co quickstart or you could use the Fan Made Quickstart rules that have some pregen characters in it. The Fan Made one can be found here;
http://www.terminal-studios.com/downloads/HackMaster-QuickStart-Guide.pdf

Quote from: noisms;519047Yeah, I can see how it would appeal to some people depending on what you like.  I'm very much of the "let's just get this over with and start playing" school of thought, so all the rolling on tables and totting up BP and Honour for HackMaster drove me crazy. I felt like a 5-year-old wanting to throw a tantrum: "Can we just start playing please??"

I think that is the secret to complex character generation. can you amke it fun? Does the Character generation feel like its a game in itself ? If you can do that then making the character is enjoyable even if it takes 30 mins or more. If its like a mix of balancing your cheque book and defining the variable s for a java programme then you are agoign to loose a few people.

Traveller and Amber both get htis right. Both have complex chargen that takes time but both make the process enjoyable and they feel like part of the game rather than a chore you need to get through before the game starts.
I think if you use a point buy system you need to have a more fun method or a quickstart.

Quote from: greylond;519024And yet you don't have a problem with the Point Buy portion of Amber? Interesting...

Amber's Point buy is so straightforward that its not really cumbersome.  You're paying for very set things, and you don't have enough points to make it an ordeal. You don't have 540CP to divide among 9 attributes, 40 skills and 400 powers to choose from.

RPGPundit

Quote from: jibbajibba;519051I think that is the secret to complex character generation. can you amke it fun? Does the Character generation feel like its a game in itself ? If you can do that then making the character is enjoyable even if it takes 30 mins or more. If its like a mix of balancing your cheque book and defining the variable s for a java programme then you are agoign to loose a few people.

Traveller and Amber both get htis right. Both have complex chargen that takes time but both make the process enjoyable and they feel like part of the game rather than a chore you need to get through before the game starts.
I think if you use a point buy system you need to have a more fun method or a quickstart.

Very well put.

RPGPundit

Quote from: greylond;518895NP, I'll have to remember to update this as I go up in level...

And anyone who has questions, please ask...

You should do a combat example--- in another thread of course.

(Yeah, I know about the comic book.)

There is a new combat example that is really good that is coming out in the PHB. That goes to the printers on Tues/Wed so hopefully they'll put it up on the web.

Also, I asked about updating the Quick Start Character Generation and Dave Kenzer said, "That's a Good Idea!" So they'll eventually update that also...

Quote from: RPGPundit;519329Amber's Point buy is so straightforward that its not really cumbersome.  You're paying for very set things, and you don't have enough points to make it an ordeal. You don't have 540CP to divide among 9 attributes, 40 skills and 400 powers to choose from.

RPGPundit

Way to overstate the case to make your point look better. HM doesn't have "540 CP, 9 attributes, and 400 powers," it does have quiet a lot of skills though.

From your history with it that you've posted here I'm pretty sure that I was GM'ing Amber before you were(1991/1992), so I'm very familiar with Amber character generation. In fact I'd say that for teaching total newbies Amber is a little tougher because you have to teach people the basics of Zelazny's strange world/concepts whereas HackMaster's setting concepts are basic Medieval Fantasy that most gamers are very familiar with already. In my Amber campaign back then I had one other gamer who had read the books and the rest of the table who and never heard of the books(yea, I know, it shocked me too).

Comparing the two point buys, I'd say that they both take about the same amount of time for gamers who don't suffer from Analysis Paralysis, depending on how long the attribute auction takes. For example Hammer only took me about 20 minutes to put together.

Pundit you like Aces and Eights, the character creation is quite similar.  If anything, the skill section is simpler then A&8's.

Yea, Dave Kenzer refers to A&8's as "HackMaster 4.5"...

Please Hammer, don't hurt 'em!


Sorry, I had to say that.

jg

Quote from: greylond;519345From your history with it that you've posted here I'm pretty sure that I was GM'ing Amber before you were(1991/1992), so I'm very familiar with Amber character generation.

I started playing Amber a few months before the Amber rulebook was released.

RPGPundit

Ok I didn't know that. My point was that I was GMing it back in '91/92 so I'm familiar enough with both systems to compare the two.

Quote from: CRKrueger;519392Pundit you like Aces and Eights, the character creation is quite similar.  If anything, the skill section is simpler then A&8's.

I do like Aces & Eights, but I also think that character creation is too long and complicated a process in it; the players I had when I ran it agreed with that.

RPGPundit

Yea, again, a matter of personal taste. I know a bunch of people who love that character creation also.

Although, using the character creation spreadsheet that was created for it speeds up the process a lot. The spreadsheet is hosted at K&Co but maintained by some fans.