[Design] Character Generation: Detail vs Opportunity Cost

[Kyle Schuant]

CB: The players need to be able to make equal contributions to the story or they'll get dissallusioned and their creative imput will be cramped. this is not to say individual characters as stand alone enities need to be equal but they should have other resources the player can use in the story such as allies, contacts, wealth etc... 

KS: Certainly this is true in principle. However, in practice, a game's design doesn't make it inevitable that all _will_ make equal contributions to the story, simply that they _can_ do so (I'm not saying you're not aware of this distinction, Carl, I'm elaborating on what you've said, rather than refuting it). Let's suppose you have some point-based system where the standard character is 10 points. You could give an active player a 1 pt character, and a sleepy player a 100 pt character, and the active player would still dominate the game. 
    There's a group dynamic thing, an expression of personality, which happens in roleplaying game sessions. And that goes beyond the on-paper strength of characters. The major obstacle to characters having an equal place in the story is _never_ their power level, it's the imagination and energy of the player. "It's not the size of the character, it's what you do with it." :D
    It's why I'm not too worried about equal power levels in games, or in "game balance" between different character types, etc. The _player type_ is far more important than the _character type_ in seeing who dominates the game group. 

Cheers,
Kyle
Better Mousetrap Games
home of d4-d4 and other stuff
http://www.rpgnow.com/default.php?manufacturers_id=339
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mimesisrpg.com/pipermail/design_mimesisrpg.com/attachments/20051121/bef7ecf1/attachment.htm>