Common questions about Character creation
Short answers, pulled from the story.
When was Dungeons & Dragons released and how did it change character creation?
The 1st of January 1974 marked the release of Dungeons & Dragons, the game that turned character creation from a simple list of stats into a ritual of imagination. Before this date, tabletop gaming existed, but it lacked the deep, personal investment that comes from building a person from scratch. The process of character creation is the first step taken by players, distinct from the gamemaster, to prepare for a game.
How does random generation work in early Stormbringer role playing game editions?
In the first editions of the Stormbringer role playing game, the character's race and class were determined by rolling 1d100 and looking up the result in the appropriate table, leaving the player with little control over the scores. This method of random choice allows the full range of values to be generated for each statistic, leading to diversity among newly generated characters, but it also introduces an element of chaos that can frustrate or delight a player. For example, in some editions of Dungeons & Dragons, the player rolls 4d6 and adds the highest three numbers to generate an ability score from 3 to 18, a system that can result in a character who is either a hero or a liability depending on the luck of the draw.
What is point distribution and which games use it for character creation?
The Hero System, including its predecessor Champions, and GURPS, the World of Darkness series, and the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game with its unusual auction system, all utilize point distribution to determine statistics, giving players a high degree of control over their creations. In a point distribution system, higher scores cost more points per level than lower ones, and costs may vary between statistics within a category, creating a strategic puzzle for the player to solve. Some Dungeons & Dragons editions also have an optional point buy method for determining ability scores, allowing players to tailor their characters to specific roles without the risk of rolling poor stats.
How do narrative generation models work in Traveller and Empire of the Petal Throne RPGs?
In the Traveller, Empire of the Petal Throne and Harnmaster RPGs, narrative generation models a character's life prior to becoming an active adventurer, allowing the player to choose family origin and make further decisions at specific life checkpoints such as early education, young adulthood, or tours of duty in various careers. Each stage applies modifiers and gives the character the opportunity to develop skills, advantages, and possessions, or to suffer setbacks and disadvantages, creating a rich backstory that informs the character's motivations and abilities. In some cases, a player may run through repeated career cycles to sacrifice character youth for additional skills, experience and material advancement, a process that adds depth and complexity to the character's history.
What are racial and occupational modifiers in Dungeons & Dragons and Stormbringer 3rd edition?
In many games, certain statistics are slightly increased or decreased depending on the character's race and sometimes profession, a mechanic known as racial or occupational modifiers. In Dungeons & Dragons, for example, non-human races typically increase one ability score by two on a scale of 3 to 18 while another is lowered by the same amount, creating a trade-off that players must consider when choosing their character's race. In Stormbringer 3rd edition, nearly all nationalities subraces cause adjustments of some or all attribute scores by an amount that is usually randomly determined and has a range of up to two-thirds of an attribute's initial value, adding another layer of complexity to the character creation process.
How do character templates and classes simplify the Dungeons & Dragons character creation process?
To speed up and simplify the character creation process, many games use character templates, which are sample characters representing genre-typical archetypes. These templates can be completely ready-made or only define the statistics necessary for a character to fill a particular occupation or dramatic role, such as a thief who should know how to move quietly, pick locks, disarm traps, and climb walls. Other games use templates as a mandatory tool to provide direction and limitations to character creation and development, a concept known as the character class, which was introduced by Dungeons & Dragons and is now used in all d20 System games and has been adopted by many others, such as Palladium Books' Megaversal system.