Quote from: Haffrung;302139Yep. My group is pretty fucking old-school. However, some guys have no interest in ever playing spellcasters, and one guy only ever wants to play Magic-users, Druids, and Thieves. Who am I to step in tell them they need to get out of their comfort zone and play a different class?

You don't have to. Choice of class is an absolute right of the Player, within the classes offered of course. So if you have a player that ends up with an 8 STR and a 17 INT who wants to play a fighter, that's no problem. He's just a very smart fighter who isn't very strong, and that would include all kinds of interesting elements for his fighter: why did he become a fighter? Why didn't he become a wizard? How does he use his intelligence to assist himself as a fighter? How does he compensate for not being as strong as most fighters?

RPGPundit

Pundit, you motherfucker, don't you realise that encouraging players to use their imaginations is an intolerable burden upon them that no free citizen in a democracy could possibly tolerate without taking up arms?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;302668Pundit, you motherfucker, don't you realise that encouraging players to use their imaginations is an intolerable burden upon them that no free citizen in a democracy could possibly tolerate without taking up arms?

And there's no imagination in coming up with your own character idea without needing a system to force you into one?

Just because your groups have all been unimaginative twats doesn't mean everyone else is.

Quote from: Haffrung;302139Yep. My group is pretty fucking old-school. However, some guys have no interest in ever playing spellcasters, and one guy only ever wants to play Magic-users, Druids, and Thieves. Who am I to step in tell them they need to get out of their comfort zone and play a different class?

Why is it a problem that they play classes that they enjoy? Is it messing with your ability to make interesting scenarios?

Quote from: J Arcane;302678And there's no imagination in coming up with your own character idea without needing a system to force you into one?

Sure there is.

But you should have more than one character idea in you for your decades of having a gaming hobby.

Quote from: RPGPundit;302643You don't have to. Choice of class is an absolute right of the Player, within the classes offered of course. So if you have a player that ends up with an 8 STR and a 17 INT who wants to play a fighter, that's no problem. He's just a very smart fighter who isn't very strong, and that would include all kinds of interesting elements for his fighter: why did he become a fighter? Why didn't he become a wizard? How does he use his intelligence to assist himself as a fighter? How does he compensate for not being as strong as most fighters?

Some people have fun doing this while others don't. In my experience the latter are more numerous than the former. I find trying to push the latter out of their niche is not worth the trouble as most likely they won't show up for your game.

However I don't just accept it either. I had players wanted to play nothing but elves who had Silver in there name, another guy who named his characters alternatively either Alec or Marcus

My trick was "give  up" and let them have their way the character generation, however he background was different for everyone. So the Silverring turned out to be a vastly different character than Silverwing. The same for the 1st Marcus against the 2nd Marcus.

After about two or three iterations of this the players began to think of other possibilities to play as they experienced different situations as I wove their background into the game.


P.S.Years later we found out the second named one of his kids Marcus. When
we teased him about it, he turned red and asked us not to tell his wife about it as she didn't know the source of the name.

Flashing Blades chargen is interesting.

1. Roll 3d6 in order to generate attribute score for Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Wit, Charm, and Luck.

2. The total of the attribute scores must be greater than or equal to fifty-four (the equivalent of a score of nine for each attribute)

3. The player may trade points on a two-for-one basis, e.g., taking two points from Endurance to add one point to Wit.

It's a middle ground of sorts: randomness plus some customization.

Quote from: The Shaman;302907Flashing Blades chargen is interesting.

1. Roll 3d6 in order to generate attribute score for Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Wit, Charm, and Luck.

2. The total of the attribute scores must be greater than or equal to fifty-four (the equivalent of a score of nine for each attribute)

3. The player may trade points on a two-for-one basis, e.g., taking two points from Endurance to add one point to Wit.

It's a middle ground of sorts: randomness plus some customization.

Except for step two, that is how we rolled up our earliest D&D characters as well.  I'm not sure where the 2-for-1 trade came in, probably an early issue of Dragon or something.

Quote from: J Arcane;302036I also think there is one other option that is being ignored here.

...

I think however, that "point-buy" is not really an accurate term for the divide here, in that not all systems with player-directed, hand-picked character design are necessarily "point-buy" or fraught with the bookkeeping that comes with pure Hero/GURPS style point buy.

Many games make use of systems where in character creation is simply a series of choices.  X class pick here, Y race pick here, Z, A, B talent pick here, done.  Dark Heresy is like this.  Low-level D&D3 is like this.  

I think a lot of things are being conflated together as a result of this excluded middle and making this whole discussion rather aimless and silly.  Either the debate here is actually between the virtues of random versus player-directed creation, or it's nothing more than a rant about a type of system that is much more specific than is being implied.

Quoted for truth.

And my favorite method for generating anything and everything is just picking shit off a list. It's why I liked SAGA. For ability scores, I prefer a pregenned set that I can assign as I like. Quick, custom, and standard character power.

Quote from: beejazz;302932Quoted for truth.

And my favorite method for generating anything and everything is just picking shit off a list. It's why I liked SAGA. For ability scores, I prefer a pregenned set that I can assign as I like. Quick, custom, and standard character power.

One of my all-time favorite chargen systems is Fallout/SPECIAL.  The stats are technically point allocation, but it's the most "complicated" part of the whole process.  After that it's just pick 3 tag skills and (optionally) 2 traits and calculate your secondaries and you're done.  You can make up a character in like 5 minutes.

Well, that's all well and spiffy, but SPECIAL is based off of GURPS, on account of the fact that Fallout was initially supposed to use the system prior to a falling out between Steve Jackson Gaming and Black Isle. Though, yes, I will admit that the chargen in Fallout was very quick. Plus the setting was tops, so there's that.

On the other hand, SPECIAL kinda looses something in the translation from video game to table-top. I dunno, I'm just not a big fan of the way they handle Skill Resolution. Call me crazy, but I've always preferred the skill system in DnD 3.5. I really liked what they were doing there.

I'm just sayin' is all.

Quote from: stressfear;303040Well, that's all well and spiffy, but SPECIAL is based off of GURPS, on account of the fact that Fallout was initially supposed to use the system prior to a falling out between Steve Jackson Gaming and Black Isle. Though, yes, I will admit that the chargen in Fallout was very quick. Plus the setting was tops, so there's that.

On the other hand, SPECIAL kinda looses something in the translation from video game to table-top. I dunno, I'm just not a big fan of the way they handle Skill Resolution. Call me crazy, but I've always preferred the skill system in DnD 3.5. I really liked what they were doing there.

I'm just sayin' is all.

Umm, no, SPECIAL is not based on GURPS, except the the absolute most broad sense that combat still takes place on a hex grid.  The system is completely different, and the chargen bears more resemblance to a classless, percentile based D20 than it does to GURPS.

The GURPS license was lost, the only thing they kept was the hex grid because it's what the engine was built around.  If they'd dared go any farther with the system they would've been threatening a lawsuit.  

In terms of actual play, well, plenty people played it.  The onyl problem I have personally with it are the range bands are a slight bit of excess calculation, and you have to houserule auto fire because rolling a percentile for each bullet like the game does is for obvious reasons rather impractical.

Regardless however, none of those faults have a damn thing to do with the Character Creation, which is what I was bloody talking about.