nats said:
Well I am a very inexperienced Referee so I am not entirely sure that I have run any successful games yet, and I have only so far ever presented pre-made characters to my players.
Even so, the fact that you're here suggests that
someone must have had fun during the sessions you ran. Which means you were doing
something right.
nats said:
Either way in this book the author suggests that generating a randomised character is a bad way to go if you want to encourage players to role play. Characters should reflect what the player wants to play, be unusual, heroic and likeable. And I fully agree with all of his points which are based on his many years of role playing experience.
I've read the introduction and the first three chapters of that book, so I haven't quite gotten to his take on character generation (that's chapter 4...), but
my many years of role-playing experience (like the author, I started in the late 70s) don't show any tendency of random chargen to discourage role-playing. If there is any correlation - and I'm not convinced that there is one - I expect that it goes in the other direction: Players who get into heavy RP are more likely to come to the table with a concept already in mind, so they're also more likely to want to build that character (point-buy) rather than to discover a new one (random gen).
nats said:
I don't like to hear that stuff because I actually enjoy generating random characters using the Traveller system but I can completely see how this can often create characters that a player may not relate with or be interested in, and therefore will not have any desire to role play with.
If you enjoy generating random characters, then generate random characters. It's not wrong and it won't prevent you from having a great game in whatever style (RP-heavy or action-focused or whatever else) you want. My experience is that a rich random system, such as Traveller's, makes it
easier to RP by giving characters an interesting background and life story (as opposed to a D&D-style random chargen, which just gives you a list of stats and nothing more). If there's something about the character that makes it uninteresting or unengaging for the player - and I can't recall a time I've ever had Traveller give me one like that, but YMMV - then the player and GM can either agree on some tweaks to make the character more interesting or you can just roll a new one from scratch, perhaps even saving the first one for later use as an NPC.
nats said:
Its probably the best book I have ever read about role playing to date actually and I have only read the Amazon preview bits of it so far! Its definitely on my wish list.
As I hinted at in my earlier reply, the full text is available for free download from the author's site: http://www.gamemastering.info/get-the-book There's no need to limit yourself to Amazon's previews.
Vyrolakos said:
Random vs. custom built characters:
There's room for both.
Exactly!
Vyrolakos said:
Pre-written adventures vs. custom adventures designed specifically with the players custom characters in mind:
There's room for both.
I'm a little less open-minded on this one, simply because some adventures don't make much sense for certain types of characters and/or don't interest certain players. If you write up a bounty-hunting adventure and then the players create a bunch of rich nobles with minimal combat skills and whose pocket change is worth more than the bounty, then why would they pursue it?
Vyrolakos said:
Assuming that neither you or your players have ever played Traveller before. Perhaps you could create a short adventure based on a bounty hunting scenario and get everyone into the system and background, and then see what you and the players want to do next. ie. Don't necessarily assume that this will be the only scope of your Traveller adventures and be adaptable to what your players want to do next.
That's the real trick, be adaptable.
Adaptability is indeed key, so I tend to approach things the other way around. Go into the first session completely blank. Roll characters, then spend the rest of the session talking about the characters and about what kind of game the players might want to have. Also take a little time to familiarize everyone with the system if they don't already know it - resolve some typical skill checks for each character, play out a test combat, that sort of thing. Then go home.
Armed with the information collected about the players' interests and their characters' abilities, you can now create some situations to throw at them, confident in the knowledge that they're the sort of situations that will be interesting and appropriate for your group. Maybe even write up (the outline of) an entire "adventure" if that's the approach you're most comfortable with. Then take all this to the second session and start the actual campaign.
