Player Created Player Characters



With Players it is good to lay down a few ground rules, and just as good to offer incentives for doing so. In general it is best to get the players to think of the game in terms of a story. It is often not the best way to spell this out for them, but to present character creation to them in a different manner.

have the players start by thinking about the basic theme of the campaign as you have envisioned it. Get the players to design their character two-fold. First have them think of the hero or villain that they would like their character to grow into by the end of the campaign. This may change throughout the campaign itself but having the players think about this in the beginning will help their creative juices. Ask the players questions about their character's motivations and influence on the story. Do they want to Han Solo or Luke Skywalker? Do they want to be Aragorn or Bilbo or Legolas or Gandalf? Do they want to be Batman or Spider-man or Punisher? Get them thinking of archetypes rather than statistics.

By convincing the player to think in terms of Character Concepts rather than sinply rolling things up, The Game Master is in a position to help and guide the character creation process. A lot of games use a point based system rather than rolling up ability scores. In these games the players will be more familiar with deciding on a character concept before they start building the character, but it never hurts to help it along.

It also never hurts to explain the guidelines to the players. Tell them the power level that you are aiming for in the early stages of the campaign, explain minimums and maximums for keeping the game running smoothly. By explaining that these guidelines are to help the game and not to spoil their fun, players are more easily persuaded to follow them. In most cases however, players understand basic game balance and will roll up their characters fairly. In fact this is one of the reasons why having character concepts in mind is useful for the game. It is not uncommon for players in games where ability scores are randomly rolled, for players to roll up useless or utterly average or otherwise unappealing ability scores. In these cases, the Game Master can come to rescue and also defend game balance, by offering solutions that allow the player to player the character they want and still have fun.

Characters have to be fun to play. It's no fun to play a character who is incompetent at everything or is both a wimp and a mental midget. It's likewise often no fun to play a character who is absolutely average. many game books and long time players often extol the virtues of playing such characters. Both sources miss the point, which is the reason that Rifts and Exalted are both doing quite well, which is that playing schmucks isn't why we role-play. Players aren't actors interested in expanding their craft.

We role-play to step into the shoes of extraordinary people who we will likely never get to be in our real lives. We role-play to be Han Solo and Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones and Spider-man and King Arthur and Robin Hood and Legolas and Gandalf and Eliminster and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Darth Vader and Doctor Doom and Dracula and Jame Bond and Bruce Lee. We role-play to do cool things and be cool people, not to practise our craft. Role-Playing is fantasy escapism. Like video games, it exists to lift us out of the mundane of our regular lives. There will never be a top-selling video game about an utterly average person- “The Sims” doesn't count, because the part you're really playing in that game is GOD. There will games about lunatics, and normal people placed in extraordinary or horrible situations, and villains, and heroes (lots of games about heroes), and warriors and wizards and pilots and masterminds and explorers. Games allow us to break boundaries closed to us in the real world.

If a player is told that he has to play a wimpy character just because that was what was rolled, the player won't have fun. The whole point of the game is for everyone to have fun. The point of the game is NOT to follow the rules, not to get the treasure, not to gain experience, or to kill off the players. The point of the game is to have fun- and as Game Master your job is to mediate the game so that everyone can have fun.

So if your player has rolled up a klutz with a high intelligence for the upcoming Ninjas & Superspies Campaign, but she wants to play a female Jackie Chan (such as Michelle Yeoh), we recommend that you help the player accomplish that goal. Maybe offer to let the player trade ability score points between ability scores on a one-to-one basis. Maybe raise the character's physical scores to the required minimum and take the Intelligence score (actually called I.Q. in said game) down to point where it offers no bonuses. This would result in a more average character, but if it allows the player to play the character they want, this may not be a problem. Maybe allow the player to reroll one score and take the new score. Maybe allow the player to swap ability scores straight across. There are a myriad of options.

Likewise it is possible that if a player has a concept idea they really like, they may want something that is not available to a starting character. A character whose character concept is of a young knight questing to find his missing father, who disappeared on a quest leaving the son with the family sword. The Player wants to begin play with the family sword and wants to it be exceptional in some way: magical or a the work of a master craftsman or maybe containing the souls of the family ancestors- something cool. This can be used in the story and is actually helpful to the Game Master as long as it is handled right. The key is to find a balance point, a drawback or cost that keeps the player's cool thing from overpowering the party.

The Ancestor spirits provides its own balance- the Game Master can have the Ancestors provide useful advice, but also have them occasionally lie or otherwise mislead in order to send the character where they want him to go. A magical weapon could have conditional magic, magic that is only activated when used to improve the family's honour, or when used in a righteous cause. Perhaps the magic requires a certain level of experience to be activated, the weapon is magical but the player can't use the magic in the weapon until he or she reaches a certain level of skill or learns a certain ability or a reaches a certain level of experience. Perhaps the weapon's power is activated by ritual, tithing to a church that the family has served for millenium, bathing the weapon in the blood or evil doers, meditating for one hour each morning- anything that could be disrupted if the player isn't careful. Having the sword be the work of a mastercraftsman with non-magical bonuses is also easy enough to handle. One solution is to have the player voluntarily give up a large portion of their starting funds in exchange for the weapon- thus balancing things overall. Another would be to say that such a well made blade requires special care and attention to maintain its exceptionally keen edge, and require that the player put skill points into a maintanence skill (thus depriving the player of those skill points for more directly beneficial purposes) and balancing the player's character that way.

A little creativity here can go a long way to making memorable characters that the players will enjoy playing, but will not disrupt game balance. A Player wants to start with a star ship, let them. Don't let them start with a new top of the line fighter, but giving them a older model freighter with a few tricks under the hood that the player bought with money borrowed from a crime lord will balance things, and will provide adventure hooks besides. It will also make the player feel cool, because he or she will recognise where the background story was taken from. Referring to the ship's speed on the Kessel run when pitching the idea to the player wouldn't hurt though.

In point buy systems players may want to take a few more things that the rules would allow. Vampire: The Masquerade allowed players to take a maximum of seven points in flaws to offset their perks for instance. These are guidelines, take a look at how the fudge would affect game play over the long term and use your best judgement. You don't have to allow everything, but most things can be balanced if you are careful.