From: seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Newbie System?
Date: 11 Oct 92 13:58:38 GMT
Organization: University of Pittsburgh
Originator: seawasp@unixd1.cis.pitt.edu

In article <16239@borg.cs.unc.edu> bell@monet.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell) writes:
>In article <7150@blue.cis.pitt.edu.UUCP> seawasp@vm2.cis.pitt.edu (Sea Wasp) writes:
>>However, it seems to me that premade
>>characters are directly against all roleplaying.
>
>Excuse me if I'm mistaking you for someone else, but weren't arguing
>vehemently in favor of rolling character attributes in AD&D?

	Yes. So what's your point?
	If YOU roll the character, YOU create it. If I roll, I create it.
It may seem very silly, but to me, even ROLLING a character is an
organic process that begins with the first roll. The character develops
along with the stats, the adds, the mods, the choice of race, class...
It's a very personal thing. On the other hand, if you do that process
it's cold. I don't "know" this person.

>
>>You designed it differently,
>>you have a different conception of it, and in short it isn't a character
>>for me; it's a collection of numbers with no relation to me at all.

>Is the mechanical of a character really the only standard you have for
>personality?

	Nope. But it's part of the entirety of the character. If, for example,
you take a character with stats X,Y,Z and make him a race and class that are
different that the race and/or class that I would have chosen, then that
character clashes with my aesthetic sensibilities; it isn't "properly"
designed. Note that this doesn't mean that you have created a bad character --
you may even have designed one that's more efficient and powerful and perhaps
even, on some objective scale, potentially more fun. But it's still not
MY character.

	This is different than being an actor in a play. The actor is not
expected to do anything other than take a pre-existing character and
add a few little quirks of interpretation, while taking that character to
a predetermined destination. I have fun doing that too, but it's not 
ROLEPLAYING. If it was, you'd never know how the play was going to turn out
(which might be fun -- start out in Hamlet with the premade scenario and
let people ROLEplay the characters. Maybe someone would actually survive...)

  While personality will have some impact on the skills
>chosen, this could be adjusted for simply by having a Chinese menu
>system ("Choose 1 from column A, 2 from column B")...  Even without this,
>the personalities of two beings with the same skill set can be widely
>varying.  Take AD&D v1, for example.  Only the stats, race, gender, and
>weapons of proficiency distinguish one fighter or thief from another in
>the raw (significant) mechanics.

	The personality develops, for me, as I create the character. 
It's not something separate from the mechanics. The reason I choose,
for example, a weapon of proficiency is because I have by then gotten
a handle on the way the character thinks and this determines what kind
of weapon the character focuses on (for example, Kyrie Ross, the Phoenix,
used a 2-Hd sword partly because she wanted to handle a weapon that none
of the men around her dared use. Her brother Michael, on the other hand,
used a longsword even though he was stronger than Kyrie, because he 
preferred the speed of the longsword, and its easy portability, to the
ponderous but impressive 2-hd).

	I think also this has to do with the way that the groups one
has played with "roll up" characters. The ones I have gamed with, in
general, don't FORCE you to take everything that you roll. If you 
want to play a mage -- you start out with that idea -- and you roll
a hell of a fighter with no intelligence, you then just roll again
and create another character. Or maybe you're allowed to switch
attributes. I approach games in different frames of mind. Sometimes I
know precisely what I want to play, stats, personality, equipment, the 
works; in that case I go to the GM and work the character up without
rolls. Sometimes I know the general kind of character (hardboiled theif,
pacifistic fighter, drunken cleric) and then I roll until I get a set of
stats that at least basically fits that character. And sometimes I have
absolutely NO clue as to what I want, and then I just let the rolls bring
images to my mind until I know what he/she/it is.

	The essential point in all of them, though, is that the character
was mine from the beginning. No matter how it was created, its creation
is part of me. I WANT to play it. On the other hand, a premade character
that gets handed to me just may not be what I'm in the mood for. If I
feel like a crotchety old fighter with a couple spells in reserve, and
I get handed the choice of a noble Paladin or a sneak theif, I'm going
to be pretty disappointed no matter what.


				Sea Wasp


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