[Design] Character Generation: Detail vs Time Opportunity Cost

[David Cake]

At 7:04 PM -0800 15/11/05, Lev Lafayette wrote:
>Probably doing it best from all the Rolemaster books,
>Cyberspace gave you childhood and adolscent skills
>from you social background (MERP used 'racial
>background') and then you developed character
>profession skills.

	These systems, when done badly, can give you the worst of 
both worlds - relatively little flexibility, AND a lot of time spend.
	And they are, of course, mostly of appeal to your hard core 
simulationist. Most people really don't care that much about what 
their character did at high school.
	Oh, dear god, I'm having Space Opera flashbacks. You'd 
actually have all these skills on your character sheet that had 
absolutely no purpose in game whatsoever except as prerequisites for 
some skill that was a prerequisite for some skill that seemed 
important to your character concept. if you decided your character 
was an engineer, you had to basically work out what units he did at 
university to get his major.
	Cheers
		David