thread: 2005-05-06 : A complete game has...
On 2005-05-08, Vincent wrote:
Jason: a character is wholly imaginary, wholly fiction. A character is a fictional person with a) a stake in an issue and b) fitness to follow through on the stake, whatever in particular that means.
As designer, you should provide enough material that characters are easy to come up with (stake and fitness and all). You can do this either directly, like "everybody should think of a sorcerer at a turning point (kicker)." Overwhelmingly most games do it this way. Or you can do it indirectly, like "collectively describe a town in crisis. Now, everbody choose someone who lives in the town and who's a figure in the crisis." Very few games do it this way - Legends of Alyria will, I understand; I don't know any others.
The mechanical parts of "character creation" are the [i]player's[/i] starting positon wrt resolution, reward and maybe the others. You need that no matter what your game does with characters.
