Spoiled for Choice

I’ve come to strongly dislike the wealth of choices in contemporary character generation procedures.

I equate it with a trap, as the vaunted range of options gets relentlessly funnelled by the gears of rational optimization into one of a very limited number of viable molds (or “builds”).

It also encourages exercises in futurology and “level regression”, which we’ve all seen before: players coming up with optimized and 20th-level-regressed characters, the “predestined lot”, parcel to the entitled playstyle where success is a downright part of a campaign’s pitch – skilled players need not apply.

The worst offender of the whole "fetishized game balance" trend to me has got to be “point buy”, which I’ve had the opportunity to recently try out in the 5E campaign I played in which yielded some of the most positively soulless results I’ve ever seen in an RPG; Truly bland characters, given how little variation was possible between stat attribution, leading everyone to one of two build strategies: “strong suit & dump stat” or “all-rounder”. Neither option being the least bit enticing, as characters with no weak points and even those whose strong suits were utterly reined in (since the stat maximums were set at 16 and minimums at 8) made for a dreadfuly uninspiring chargen.

As I widen my readings along the blogosphere, I see chargen being treated as something from between a multiple-branching major concern to a necessary evil. Either letting optimizers have the cake or, at the opposite pole, getting the whole process over with quickly to enable new players to get most directly to grips with the game.

Even though I lean toward this latter camp, it’s not something that I see as being usually belaboured to any great degree so the plot seemed ripe for some heartbreaking whimsy. This is my stab at a  character generation module, made to interact with 5th Edition, but near enough to system-agnostic.

Paint it big.

As intended for a non-narrativistic gameplay experience, I believe character generation should aim to be several things: fast-paced, unpredictable, unbalanced and producer of diverse results. These four descriptors are weaved together on the basis of two root principles: the desire that no two characters should ever be exactly alike and the understanding that characters can die or retire.

Fast-Paced

In order to accommodate swift introduction of new players as well as accounting for the fact that older players may well be engaging in it more than once and also wishing to keep options open to allow a degree of agency – few but significant options and decision-points: not “3d6 in order”, but not too far from it, either.

Unpredictable (and Unbalanced)

Letting the dice fall where they may will provide for a wide spectrum of character capabilities – ideally “no two exactly alike” – but is a design aim that immediately takes the ethereally wispy snowflake that is game balance as an hostage. Other than putting into place a mitigation step that allows for additional feat purchases to weak-statted characters (increasing variety in the process), I conceded that the efforts aimed at the hair-graying utopia of game balance are much better spent in shutting up and leveraging what you got.

Wide Variance of Results

This is aimed at enabling a player to appreciate and value their own character. If getting any given set of stats and abilities has an implied cost of nothing but a short trip to the PHB (or character-building app of choice) then I guess it is expected that character death should be greeted with a jaded shrug of the shoulders.

“Bob died? Well shucks, here’s Dod, his replacement; Same stats, same class, same abilities, same level, let us get on with this”.

As the contemporary methods of character generation have become more and more calcified (always start at maximum hp, completely predictable levelling up gains, choice of feats, etc.), the burden of relative diversity for characters has been laid at the feet of the different classes and their special powers. Once you get tired of these, then it’s off to buy new ones from your usual resellers.

To conclude, I believe the game to be better served with greater reliance on the archetypal classes and the variance between the characters themselves being provided by chargen and the character’s own in-play growth –  thus fighting the age-old “all fighters are alike” problem.

And I'm sidestepping Backstory for now, I'll rail against that particular brand of bullshit on the next post.