For me
character creation is like ordering from a menu. People have some idea what
they want to play or eat, and a menu helps them decide exactly what they order
in the context of the game or restaurant. Character creation is an essential
step in playing in a roleplaying game, just as ordering food is a required part
of enjoying a meal at a restaurant. The process isn’t the main endeavor but a
necessary prelude. The sooner one creates a character or orders food, the
sooner one moves on to the primary and more fulfilling activity.
I prefer
game rules that easily allow me to teach newcomers, both experienced gamers
trying a new system and complete novices to roleplaying games as a whole.
Although I usually rely on basic pre-generated characters when running games at
conventions, when starting a new group (either as a gamemaster or player
myself) I prefer a relatively easy character creation process. Like ordering
food at a good restaurant, menus aid that process.
I like
restaurants with simple menus. That doesn’t necessarily mean the food isn’t
good or the meals simplistic; it means the restaurant focuses on a few really
excellent dishes, enough that my choices fit on one or two pages. I can peruse
a brief, well-organized menu and find something I like so I can get on with the
enjoyment of the meal and those with whom I’m sharing it. Many family style
franchise restaurants have menus with multiple, full-color pages splattered
with loud typefaces and tempting photographs of various menu items. Nobody has
time to comprehend all that information and make an informed choice based on
their tastes and appetites, especially with some harried waiter pestering your
table for its orders.
Menus help
us connect what a restaurant offers with what we as diners desire based on our
tastes and appetite. Too much information presented on too many pages with too
many loud typefaces and photographs distracts us from making an informed
decision and thus threatens the enjoyment of our overall dining experience.
Like a good
restaurant menu, an effective character creation menu -- at least for my gaming
tastes -- remains concise yet varied. I prefer character creation systems to
have a few basic choices, well organized like a menu, that help me order up
something I’ll enjoy playing in the game. Certainly some gamers prefer tomes of
character creation rules and options, with massive lists of feats from which to
customize their heroes. This approach characterizes a certain style of game
that often proves daunting to newcomers to the adventure gaming hobby. Although
I myself once dove head-first into vast tomes of game rules, as I get older and
find myself with less time to both learn and play new games. I’m drifting
toward easier game engines with shorter start-up times and lower learning
curves; much of that boils down to a streamlined yet meaningful character
creation system.
I love the D6 System, especially as presented in
the classic Star Wars Roleplaying Game
by West End Games. It was among the first innovative, skill-based game engines
to allow players to choose a general character template -- in this case based
on a stereotype from the Star Wars
films -- customize it by adding a few dice to boost some characteristic skills,
and dive into playing. While this isn’t a menu per se, it helps illustrate my affinity for a quick and easy
character creation systems with a basic yet expandable core game mechanic.
Two
relatively recent games -- Old School
Hack and Dungeon World --
exemplify for me the furthest refinement of putting everything one needs for
character creation right on the character sheet…and they both manage part of it
using menus. (I’m sure other roleplaying games out there embrace the simplicity
and clarity of this menu technique, whether on the character sheet itself or in
character creation rules and class descriptions, but I’m focusing on two I’ve
recently enjoyed.)
Old School Hack -- a retro-clone,
dungeon-delving style game -- describes each iconic fantasy class on
single-page sheets, complete with a list of exceptional “talents” (special
abilities) from which players can choose. Players essentially use a character
sheet to record specifics of their character and reference the class sheet for
class-specific game rules. Using Old
School Hack’s “awesome point”
mechanic during gameplay, players can spend points to activate talents they
haven’t yet gained, making easy reference to class talents important in showing
that class’ potential. The game’s overall presentation works extremely well for
referencing rules, with each page serving almost as a player or gamemaster
handout presenting rather clearly all the rules on a given subject.
I recently
had a chance to play an early version of Dungeon World --
a “hack” of the popular Apocalypse World
that uses a very similar approach -- which goes one step further and puts everything
one needs on one, double-sided, class-based character sheet. Aside from the
stats, this includes a multiple-choice menu of sorts from which players check
off elements for their character. I went into the game session knowing I tend
to play dwarven fighters in fantasy roleplaying games. I picked the fighter
from the available classes; one of my first choices was “race,” so I checked
off “dwarf” and noted any special rules or “moves” allowed by that choice.
“Alignment” was also one of the first categories, with each choice including a
short description of how that related to one’s class. My “starting moves”
included several actions exclusive to fighters, but then a menu-driven
“signature weapon” move that allowed me to customize my dwarf’s axe with a few
special abilities. Determining one’s gear also used a menu checklist with
certain limitations. The sheet even included appropriate lists from which to
choose names and aspects of one’s appearance (which inevitably led to numerous
jokes about the paladin’s stunning hair).
Both games
remove the element of referencing character elements from the rulebook and put
it right on the character sheet itself, streamlining things further by
employing menus to some degree.
These games
illustrate an extreme of sorts. Rather than sending players into vast tomes of
character creation rules and options, they concisely list a representative menu
of options players can choose on class-oriented character sheets. Like most of
my choices in game design, my tendencies lean toward some middle ground closer
to the more beginner-friendly technique rather than one extreme or the other. While
putting every option in a menu on the character sheet is a bit more than I
prefer in my own game design endeavors, it proves the effectiveness of clearly
and concisely providing character creation rules and options in one place (even
if still in a rulebook).
