Limiting Character Options
May 23, 2007
After reading some of the comments on this post: http://www.treasuretables.org/2007/05/do-you-limit-character-options
I found the … prejudice? … of the question to be very weird. I never thought it would be an issue. Seriously, aren’t all games limited by definition? And if you, as the GM, are designing the campaign, aren’t you necessarily going to have to limit and control the character options?
As an example, we have played two sessions so far of a campaign in which the players didn’t even create the characters. I did. Then, in the first session we did something we used to do by accident but this time on purpose. We had the group make changes to each others’ characters.
Anyway, that’s a whole other post. But the idea of having just open-ended character options I think would be the strange idea. I have done that before and it was fun, but controlled options makes more sense for almost every “normal” campaign I can think of.
May 23, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Yup, I totally agree with you, though I’ve never handed out characters for a general RPG session (have done it for convention scenarios, and once or twice for a one-shot). I’ve never tried the “other players modify your character” idea, but it’s definitely got some potential. I have had players give input on each others characters.
Frank