Making Characters: Dice or Design?

One of the recurring questions as a Gamemaster is the question of how to go about making characters. This falls into two broad camps: designing or discovering.

• Designing a character is a process that starts with an idea in the head of the player or Gamemaster.
• Discovering a character involves using some process to generate a character idea through some random process.

This article considers the merits of each approach. The general conclusion is that which approach to take arises from three factors: your tastes; your own or player knowledge of the game system; your group’s collective familiarity with the setting.

Designing

Author of Gamemastering, Brian Jamison, insists that the best way to create characters is to create (aka design) them:

“Roleplaying is about heroics, about being something one could never be in real life. A character in a roleplaying game should never be random. We’ve already been dealt a random hand in the game of life. Roleplaying is a chance to determine our hand in advance and play it out.”

“What is being created here is an expression of desire, a role, an object of fun that a person can explore, adventure through, and become invested in.”

“The player should be given the choice of any attributes or skills the game system offers.” (pp. 36-37)

Jamison even admits that the idea of “rolling up” a character makes him “cringe”:

“Unfortunately, this simplistic process leads to shallow games where players don’t so much roleplay as act in whatever way they happen to feel at that moment.”

Until very recently, I would have agreed with him. My current Dungeons & Dragons game with the Friday Night Roleplay group was, however, only the first time that I have ever managed to use his suggested process for character creation. It works well… but it does cause its own problems too. Most notably, while the players might be heavily invested in their characters, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they design heroes and story ideas that appeal to you as Game Master.

Some games allow for design; many  modern games use design as the default – it’s hard-baked into the game rules. A great many games, however, default to the “rolling up” processes that most roleplayers of experience will be familiar with. In the latter case, you need to adjust the game system heavily to accommodate designing characters.

Jamison’s system is pretty comprehensive and typical: you come up with a broad concept; you describe the character in some detail; you “interview” the character to flesh out details.

“Treat the interview as a really fun brainstorming session. It’s more than asking questions. It is a fun exchange where the player and GM play ideas off one another and stimulate each other’s creativity.” (Gamemastering, p. 37)

The aim with design is to give the player what they want so that the game is fun for them. It takes lots of time but can create some memorable characters; the payoff is in the tendency of players to invest in their characters and want to roleplay them.

Discovering

In “Making Characters, Running the Game #4“, author and YouTube contributor Matthew Colville speaks about the concept of “discovering” a character. He gives a few comments on why he prefers this approach:

“The random generation system is fun. It is fun to roll dice!”

“Ideally… we make these characters together at the table because it’s fun to watch other people roll at the table and see what they get.”

“It’s also fun to discover your character.”

Colville goes on to also outline the basic problems that can arise from this in the Dungeons & Dragons game (for which he is offering advice for Dungeon Masters). In short, this boils down to the random distribution of ability scores leading to extreme values that can “cripple” one character at the expense of giving others Herculean characteristics. That said, he says that he prefers discovery overall.

Colville’s preference arises from his experience as a Game Master for inexperienced or new players. His main point is that players tend to bring their “baggage” to the table – by which he means their pre-existing conception of what makes a cool hero – and then get frustrated when they can’t play that concept using the game rules as written. For the new Dungeon Master of D&D, Colville recommends that players discover their heroes through random generation so that they can jettison that baggage.

It’s the use of the word “discover” that intrigues me as a Game Master: it’s a very evocative idea because it encourages me to open my mind to the possibilities of play, rather than fixate on my own preconceived idea of what a hero can or should be. And, yes, rolling dice is fun too.

The strongest character ideas that use the Discovery method would be those created using systems that extend beyond “rolling abilities”. Examples would include games like Classic Traveller or Harnmaster. In this style of system, you roll many traits and play a mini-game that also generates a pretty fleshed-out character back story too. The two games in particular are notable for generating detailed characters with both in-game statistics and interesting points for the Game Master to develop into adventures.

Advocates of discovery usually tout higher-speed start-up as a benefit. This is only true of game systems that have minimal or fewer details to generate (or design). In general, my experience is that creating a well-detailed character ready for play takes at least an hour in any system.

Factors for Choice

The question of which approach to choose has three main factors to consider: your tastes; your own or player knowledge of the game system; your group’s collective familiarity with the setting.

Firstly, this is an issue of taste. No individual’s preferences are inherently right or correct; neither are they wrong. As with all matters of taste, some people are going to try to convince you that they have refined and superior tastes, greater knowledge of the medium, and make grand claims. In the end, you are going to enjoy that approach which fits your tastes. My view is that you should try both approaches over time.

My own journey with gaming began, as most probably do, with “rolling up” characters. This is not quite the same as discovery unless you have been primed to discover; that being said, we rolled up characters and had lots of fun with them. I see this echoed today in the player experience of my group at the school – they rolled up characters for my Mistamere game and are having a blast. More recently, I tried designing using games that have design baked-in – GURPS or Hero or Fate, for example. Most recently I used Jamison’s system to create characters for the Hollowrim Saga. In my solo play, however, I have enjoyed discovering my characters for RuneQuest/Mythras and Harnmaster.

The second consideration is to ask yourself and your players, “How well do we know this game?”

If the answer is “not that well”, perhaps because you are new to the game or it’s been a while since you last played, you should consider Discovery; if you and your players are very confident with the game, you can consider Designing.

In short, if you don’t really know the game system very well then the players can design characters that make life difficult for you as a Game Master: the “min/maxer” can milk the game to their mechanical advantage, certainly, but also the players will make choices that surprise you and undermine your confidence.

If the players don’t know the game, it’s really hard for them to come up with good concepts and build them. You’ll end up having to do a lot of the heavy-lifting during design and this, in turn, will undermine the key advantage of design: they won’t feel as invested in their character when you build it.

The third consideration is your collective familiarity with the setting. In Jamison’s view, you should ALWAYS prefer to design your own setting… and this is done as a collective effort that takes on-board the player’s ideas and preferences. Matt Colville also agrees… and then disagrees: his view seems to be that although he has always made his own settings, pinching stuff from other people’s worlds, he often regrets this because those pre-designed worlds seem much more interesting.  If you are designing the setting from scratch, this question is not an issue: nobody knows the setting yet. If you want to use a pre-existing setting, however, then it’s a big deal.

One of my players, Ian, always encourages me to either run something totally home-brewed OR to use a well-known setting from literature, film, or TV. His usual example is that players, especially new ones, recognise settings like Star Wars and can get into those easily. Matt Colville’s use of “Fantasy Land” when introducing new players to Dungeons & Dragons is similar: it plays on the commonly accepted genre traits that float around modern culture.

My favourite world, Glorantha, and others like it (such as Harn) require some player knowledge for the design of characters. In these types of settings, including D&D‘s many worlds, you are probably wiser to use the discovery method because you can help the players learn the setting through the medium of play. My most recent experience of this was with Harnmaster, in which I discovered a character for solo play intended to help me evaluate the system. As I know very little about Harn, this process of discovery (one of the best I have ever experienced, I would add) has deepened both my knowledge of and appreciation for Harn greatly.

Conclusion

Yes, it’s “horses for courses”. The choices you make need to suit the mix of game, setting, players and you all meeting at the table (or online).

Remember that there is no “right” answer. Try to experiment and remain open-minded based upon the specific approach that might suit the specific game you are about to play.

My conclusion is that I will go with design when the players know the system and the setting is either homebrew or well-known by all; I will choose discovery for most other games, especially when new players are involved. In fact, for total newbies, I recommend just giving them a pre-generated character which you probably simply discovered using the game system as written.

Game on!