[Design] Character Generation: Detail vs Opportunity Cost

[Lev Lafayette]

Last night Erica and I visited Kyle's place to play
Ars Magica. It's a game I've read and wanted to play
for many, many years but have never had the actual
chance.

It's got great ideas. A mythic Europe, which you all
know I like. An interesting magic system based on
nouns and verbs and in Latin (e.g., "Creo Ignem" =
"Create Fire"). You roleplay a troupe of characters, a
main wizard, a couple of companions and a bunch o'
grogs. Your group forms a covenant.

All very exciting, quite inventive and after ten-plus
years it's still a good game. But dammit, we spent the
entire night on character generation and we're still
not finished. It's not as if Ars Magica has a
particularly complex character generation either.

Tell you what, if I get killed in the first hour of
actual gameplay, I'll be royally pissed!

My thoughts compared this to HeroQuest/Hero Wars where
you can walk in and say "Heortling Warrior, devotee to
Humakt" and your character is ready. I want character
generation to be that quick if necessary. But I don't
want every "Heortling Warrior, devotee to Humakt" to
be the same either.

In this case the golden mean applies, I think. How
much time should character generation take? How
individual should a character be?

One thing I've noticed. Random rolling of
characteristics can often be faster than players
having to choose stats and traits!



Lev Lafayette
lev_lafayette at yahoo.com.au
http://au.geocities.com/lev_lafayette


		
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