Whenever I ran a RQ campaign, I would schedule an evening with each PC alone first, where he or she could put a couple hours in with them doing some solo RPing before we all sat down as a group.
Holy Time on your Hands, Batman! Forestry can't be that hostile! Wanna trade lives with me? Or are you talking about being stuck in the bush somewhere with a bunch of randy lumberjacks drinking Maudite beer from Quebec and looking for ways to express emotions without being called a sissy? In that case never mind...
Kidding aside, I think character development before playing is great. I've played (and enjoyed, I'm not ashamed to admit) games like Ars Magica which are quite good at character development and enjoyed them so much more. I find that I hate 'character classes' with a passion now, and although I don't mind an archetype or two I prefer freeform character development.
But that doesn't mean I dispense with rolling. I like to have both. I probably am a narrative GM - I develop a story in my scenarios in which I involve the characters directly. They have total free participation in that story, of course. Knowing my players, I try to design scenarios/campaigns that will appeal to them and draw them in so they feel personally involved. I've had nights where players seemed to be panic-stricken thinking what was to come, and those are very rewarding.
But in my opinion that can't be acheived to rolling up characters totally randomly and finding some lame excuse for all of them to be together in the same place at the same time, let alone finding an excuse to continue travelling together. So developing backgrounds, quirks, flaws, virtues, etc. can help with all of that.
On the other hand, there are times when I'm making characters that I can't decide what to be - so I like to have the random rolls to get me started on the path to character development and fill in the blanks afterwards.
Ultimately, the particular method of character creation isn't as important as having a wide range of tools at my disposal for doing so.
Cobra