In some way or another, many TTRPGs include a formal step in character creation about the character’s stance related to… something.
As examples:
(a) Most PbtA’s playbooks come with choices, like You can’t resist to (choose among these 6);
(b) Others come with questions and a set of suggested answers, like Why did you leave your community? (Choose among these 6 or create your own);
(c) Other games offer more restricted questions: You left Chasm Town after Reeve Iledar falsely accused you of a crime. What was it? These may be followed by completely open answers or a set from which to choose;
(d) Some games have a formal step of creating a goal/trouble/motivation without any instructions, or some vague ones.
I think the more restricted models (a, c) speed up character creation and help to inform something about the setting from the start but may feel too constrained to more creative/experienced players.
On the other hand, more open implementations (d and somewhat b) give greater agency for players to create elements in their immediate circle, or even the wider world, but may fail because of creative paralysis or end up with bland answers. They tend to increase the time dedicated to character creation, too.
In your opinion, what elements of a game should guide which model to adopt? I’m thinking about character creation time and how ingrained the setting is. Can you think of other factors? In your experience, which one is more enjoyable?
Are you envisioning character creation as something done as a group activity in a session 0 (as in some pbta games?). If so, you can go pretty open, although having some options to choose from can help people from getting stuck.
Whereas if character creation can happen at different points (e.g. when a character dies, as in many OSR games) then I think it’s better to have few to no choices as it’s then a thing the player is doing instead of playing the game with everyone else.
Although not an OSR game, the system I’m working on considers character death and replacement as a constant possibility by design and can happen at any time.
That is a good point.
I think I also oversaw the possibility of these questions acting as barriers for new characters to jump in mid-game if they are too setting-specific. I’ll have to reassess them.
As a player, I’m certainly not going to commit to anything that I’ve not already decided on for a character prior to chargen and I want to spend some time with the character in play before I decide on anything more.
As a GM, I’m not going to offer up any questions that rely on players adding bits to the setting to answer. I’m also not going to offer anything that they have to commit to prior to spending time with the character.
Deciding where the PC comes from to help tie into the setting is fine. That knowledge alongside character class provides a solid foundation for character development, I reckon. Anything beyond that wanders into iffy territory.
One could argue that players can change answers that aren’t working at a later date. Sure. I’d ask why bother with the questions before that later date, then?
Now, if players want to answer questions on their own, I don’t really care. The answers have no bearing on what I’ve prepared for play and aren’t going to change anything about the setting, so the players can do whatever they want to get a better grasp on the PCs, as long as they keep in mind that it will have no effect on the world.
That’s fair, I don’t think this style of character creation caters to everyone, but it is good to know what aspects of it may be unappealing to others. Thanks.
I do this in a lot of games, but mostly focus on keeping them “open ended” if possible and lean into some of the lacunae in the rules to help frame them:
“It says here that a level 1 Fighting Man is a Veteran, what war did you fight in?”
“You are an Apprentice as a 1st level Thief, tell me about who taught you the trade?”
“As a Magic User, it says here you have a Mentor that taught you your initial Spells. What are they like?”
etc.
In the event that the Player doesn’t really have much to contribute, I can always proffer some random tables to roll on. But the key thing is that it’s usually done collaboratively between the Players, the Referee, and within the constraints of the Setting we’ve agreed to Play in. If someone says they fought a Dragon, and there are no Dragons…then we can swap that for something that does exist in the Setting, etc.
It becomes useful fodder for later Hooks/Rumors usually, and it does give them a little more by way of making that character distinctive sometimes. It’s optional, but I often end up with Players that find this sort of thing fun.
In other games, like Troika! I even whipped up some “canned background questions” for my Players to answer. Again, the idea here is to get them contributing to the Shared Imagined Space in some way, because I often find that Players tend to engage with things they’ve had a hand in creating a lot more, so having some of that “Setting Buy-In” out of the gate can make them more interested in seeing how Play is going to shape up for them.
I play two types of games and for each I choose an option not listed here.
For a game where the goal is to improvise a narrative (eg. PBTA), I see it as basically the whole game to respond to the other players with questions to tease out the characters and the setting. So it’s kind of all of the above before, during and after character creation. My note to self after a game is almost always ask more questions.
If the goal of the game is for players to use their wits to overcome some challenge (eg. OSR) then the answer is none of the above. The expectation is that we are all just buying in to the premise - we are all dungeon divers let’s get on with the looting. Your outfit is less interesting than your relic. You can have a character because we’re having fun, but the dice tell the story.