Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Cantankerous 12-20-04, 11:25 AM	Developing a character. How utterly daunting. You are, in effect, making a person who you are attemting to define within the framework of a game system. Yea Gods! Beyond daunting. The mechanisms of the game make the whole task far more difficult, because a person is not EVER the sun total of their abilities and what they know... that is only the barest of the bare skeletal beginnings of the person. To make matters far worse, the handbook that was, putatatively,to aid in accomplishing this task (The Hero Builders Guide) was obviously written all but entirely by optimizers and for optimizers. There is almost nothing in it of substance for the role player. So, why don't we, since we're supposed to be the Character Developement Board here, devise one. Part One: We should really start this BEFORE birth, with the real backdrop that helps shape our new character. Where are you from? What is the societal basis? What are the geographical factors involved? How do all the things that shape the society interact to shape the person? Why don't we start off with this ideal and begin working from here? How do we decide the pre-birth basis of the person we are creating? His parentage should be reasonable. If he's a half dragon, how exactly did that come about? If mom (or dad) was molested by a dragon in human (or elven or whatever) form, how did this come about? How EXACTLY did this happen? It could make all the difference in the world to the nasceant character to come. Does the non-dragon parent still live? Does the dragon parent still live? What the heck was a dragon doing wherever it was anyway, if it was off in human (or whatever) lands, or what was the non-dragon parent doing where it was? Again these are just the bare bones beginnings of the bare bones beginnings of the questions that will help make the person who they are. If (hopefully) the person is of a less exotic nature, the complexities still grow no less. Who were the grand parents? Are they still around? What were they like. There is still alot of their genetic make up in our unborn character, they are important too. How about birth aspecting? Most medeival and renaissance European societies were all but obsessed with the birth aspecting of the new born children and simply being well aspected at birth could mean a huge amount to the nasceant character. There are so many differing possibilities even before birth it staggers the imagination. I've left almost all of the maor points out here. So, lets have some of those too, yes? They'll improve the picture immensely. The greater the level of detail, the richer and more developed the character. I can state this with great confidence based on decades of experience as a DM and as a writer in general. Isshia
Insignia) 12-20-04, 01:29 PM	this person is an imbecil.
Ranslare 12-20-04, 01:36 PM	this person is simply trying to help. If you don't have anything constructive to say DON'T SAY IT!
Insignia) 12-20-04, 03:18 PM	True enough. I offer my apologies... *But*, "trying to help" and trashing the work of the many people on these boards and Wizards in general seems kinda inappropriate imo. I mean, even the HBG has some nice character fleshing material, not to mention the dozens of fan-made high-quality articles on the subject... Personally, I disagree with the estimation that no one is creating "persons" around here.
Airsucker 12-20-04, 09:45 PM	If you don't like the idea, go away. I think it could be helpful for those who are looking for help in making backgounds. These people might not necessarily look elsewhere.
Cantankerous 12-21-04, 06:24 AM	Hi all, "This man's an imbecile." Not the prefered way to introduce ones self. Now, on any other day I'd just be inclined to just cut you into fish bait, but today let's try this another way. A bit of background might help. In every other board where the whole role playing vs roll playing subject comes up the Wiz O's point towards the Character Developement board proudly and claim that equal time is given to all facets. BS, but politic and friendly BS at any rate. Have you read the so called Hero Builders Guide? They provide a few cookie cutter randomized tables to "develope a background". This is exactly what does NOT develope a background. This is what pretends to do so by providing non-thinking solutions to a problem that is specificly meant to stimulate ROLE play. The book promotes nothing but sterotypes and sterotypes defeat the purpose of role play. They're a decent filler for masses of faceless NPC's, giving a DM the ability to have a note or two next to a name as a stimulus to something that VAGUELY resembles a developed character (about the way a soap box derby vehicle resembles a top notch NASCAR racer) so that not all the NPC's have the same (atrificial) feel. Now, if a vague resemblence to role playing is what you like, then I heartly recomend the book to you as a role player. I do very heartily recommend the book to any optimizers. It is solid STERLING silver for those folks. From that POV the book is tightly and well constructed and decently written. Nor am I starting another discussion about the relative merits of the two approaches. Optimizers have as much merit as role players do, but this forum is the one and only forum the role players keep getting pointed towards to discuss THEIR various topics, so here we do it. I'm not knocking the book Iggy, as a DM I swear by it for my own purposes, I'm just saying that for the Developement of something other than a poor cardboard cutout of a Developed character you need something other than the idiot dice doing the thinking. Savvy? Isshia
dorkknight23 12-21-04, 08:20 PM	I don't really think the Hero's Builder Guide is especially optimizer friendly: the tables weren't supposed to be the be-all-end-all of your character creation, rather, they're supposed to provide a jumping-off point for your character's (person's, if you'd prefer, I'm using the terms interchangeably, perhaps what you'd prefer to differentiate between is "character" and "walking block of stats") design. The funnest things for me, in beginning to think about my character would be to get two or more conflicting pieces of information on the tables and use it as the starting point for a character. Sometimes even the greatest role-players in the world need a good idea, and sometimes rolling on a random table is a great way of getting one (another one being the random NPC traits found in the DMG.) That way, you can think your way into making these strange seemingly unconnected facts into a thoroughly developed whole. Also, one difficulty in the degree of development you're advocating is finding a reasonable meeting of what the player wants their character to be like and the DM's own campaign world (this can usually be less of an issue if using an already published setting like Eberron or Forgotten Realms, but it can still be.) Personally, as both a DM and a Player, I advocate something in between: I wouldn't like to see "member of evil race X except good and wielding twin scimitars" for instance, or some other character who at his best days would occupy one dimension. When creating a character, the DM must encourage their players to add personality to their characters, which in the end will make the experience more fun for everyone (hopefully.) I'm basically disagreeing with a few of your assertions (the Hero Builder's Guide is extremely friendly to "developing persons instead of characters" and has helped me as both a player and as a DM doing that very thing.) But, I do agree that players need to take the time to add some background or personality to their characters; however, the DM should be there to help out and make sure it meshes into their campaign. That way, they can make characters that are powerful, well-developed, fun to play, and fun to play with. I hope this was constructive.
Cantankerous 12-22-04, 07:48 AM	Constructive, yes, thank you. Do I agree with you.? In very few places. The tables just provide more of the same in the walking block of stats. That is all tabular results are anyway. Anything that is gotten off of a table that uses random charicterizers (dice in D&D) can be nothing more. The rolled stats are also jumping off points. Every stat in the game is a jumping off point. But at some point the jump has to be made or their isn't any real developement going on. Random rolls are not developemental, they are cookie cutter. Too, I've never once seen a DM worth a wet bag of laundry that can't give you exhaustive background if you ask for it. If he's not able to you won't be doing much role playing anyway, so why bother? Again, if you are trying to optimize (and the guide goes out of it's way to do so, read the race and class section at the front again and see what it says) the Hero Builders Guide is a bible, but a person to be protrayed isn't developed from something as simple as random rolls on a table. It is a co-operative effort between the DM and the Player; the DM providing the information and the Player arranging it and forming the neccesarry components of the personality from that. Is any of this a neccesity to play D&D? of course not. Nor is it a necessity to play D&D well, but it is EXTREMELY helpful when role playing. If you've determined the characters background randomly there is not as much personal input and the greater the personal input and attention the greater knowledge of the person in the game world that the character is the protrayal of, thus the greater the ability to make that person feel real. Isshia
dorkknight23 12-22-04, 12:22 PM	True enough, but there's a fine line between "random" and "random with malice and forethought." I'm not certainly saying "roll 3 times on table 14-A, twice on 14-B, and once on 14-C and you've got a background," I think it's interesting to make the extra cognitive steps and go "okay, I have a person who did this, was this, and has this, now how can I combine these attributes into a single person?" And it is helpful if you have two or more ways to go with an idea to have an arbitrary decision made for you. Again, if you are trying to optimize (and the guide goes out of it's way to do so, read the race and class section at the front again and see what it says) the Hero Builders Guide is a bible, but a person to be protrayed isn't developed from something as simple as random rolls on a table. It is a co-operative effort between the DM and the Player; the DM providing the information and the Player arranging it and forming the neccesarry components of the personality from that. In the scenario you gave, I'd personally downplay the DM's place in such matters. It's comes down to the player's to really decide what they want, and the DM's place is more that of a guide, to force the player to ask and answer questions about their character. The DM should provide some information of course (if all the Dwarves of your world live in the Whatever-you-call-'em Mountains in a giant metropolis, then that's something to share with your player,) but I think a lot of responsibility for such development falls onto players (whereas the DM should be focusing on his own "job": how to put that character and any others involved in the game in exciting adventures that make sense with the character's own motivations, as well as making well-developed NPC's.) And, also, some people (like many optimizers) haven't really acquired the necessary skillsets to really develop their own characters, and if the hero builder's guide is friendly to optimizers, I'd say it makes a handy crutch to lead in babysteps to more development-focused and roleplaying-focused characters. Also, just tangentially, you seem to be treating "optimization" like a four-letter word (it isn't, it's closer to twelve last I checked.) A certain degree of optimization should be welcome in any game, when players build effective characters to meet their roleplaying challenges it makes the game both more challenging and more fun (these characters are supposed to be good at what they do, and optimization helps ensure that); admittedly, there can be too much optimization in a game, and that I'm opposed to (where you simply start finetuning and manipulating blocks of stacks more like a race car than an individual.) But, some optimization can be a necessary part of making something that isn't just defined by its stats (or a necessary evil, depending on your take.)