Always Judge a Role-Playing Game by Its Character Creation Rules

I try not to judge a book by its cover, but I can't help judging a role-playing game by its character creation rules. If I feel that character creation is boring, too long, or otherwise a chore, I question how much enjoyment I could possibly derive from the rest of the game. Character creation ought to be a joy, an adventure in itself. Here is my character! I can't wait to role-play this being! I can't wait to pursue X, Y, and Z!

I won't delve at length into the kind of character creation that reminds me more of homework than heroics (GURPS). In fact, I'll leave it at that.

There are two kinds of character creation I like in a role-playing game. One is the procedural method of developing a character chronologically, charting their lifepath (and their acquisition of abilities and perhaps material things) based on the player's decisions and a certain amount of chance. Classic Traveller and FASA's Star Trek: The Role Playing Game are two good examples. It's a sort of preliminary mini-game for linking a character's abilities and back story, and it's fun.

The other kind of character creation I like is the one that allows for the most creativity for the least amount of time. I want to imagine a character, to whatever degree of detail, with as little fuss as possible. I don't want to juggle points between multiple categories, or add characteristics and divide them to generate secondary or tertiary characteristics, or min-max in any way. Essentially, I just want to use subjective character creation rules as one might find in, say, Fudge. Par example:

An easy way to create a character in Fudge is simply to write down everything about the character that you feel is important. Any attribute or skill should be rated using one of the levels Terrible through Superb.

How easy is that? If you, as a player, have an aversion even to that level of rules knowledge, there's this:

Instead of the player writing up the character in terms of traits and levels, he can simply write out a prose description of his character. This requires the GM to translate everything into traits and appropriate levels, but that's not hard to do if the description is well written. This method actually produces some of the best characters.

Now, if you're worried about players abusing the system, there's a section on that, too, but I think most players of good will and at least moderate intelligence are able to operate within the limits set by the GM. The main challenge for the GM is deciding what those limits are.

And that may be a subject for a future article...

(Combining lifepath character creation with Fudge might be worth exploring, too...)