| From: | Bull bull@*******.net |
|---|---|
| Subject: | How do you make your characters? (Was: Dwarves in |
| Date: | Mon, 19 Jul 1999 04:55:31 -0400 (EDT) |
>How do other people make their characters? Do you do the stats and then
>throw together a story to go with the stats? or do you "think before they
>roll" so to speak?
>
>What other ways have people come up with to design characters?
>
Hmmm... Honestly, I've done up characters quite a few different ways...
A lot of time, we sit down and start making characters with little warning,
and a lot of times, I don't know a whole lot about the game (I like to try
new games, so... ) so i'm stuck winging it a bit.
When I created Bull, WAYYYYYYY back when, I didn;t know a thing about the
world, other than a brief crash course from Tinner. And when we started, I
basically looked at the races and archetypes, and decided that I liked the
look of the Ork and wanted to play a decker. I was told this would be hard
since Orks have a few limitations. I said, "So?". And I came up witha
real rudimentary background and personality on the spot (Well, the
personality was basically mine witha few tweaks, but hey... S'alright
:)). A couple days later, after some thinking, I worked up a pretty decent
background, including 2 pages of history and a page that was an old "Bio"
sheet we used to use with things like "Favorite food", "Things you
dislike", "Past Relationships", "Pets", etc. And he's evolved
even more
since then. I was digging a few weeks ago and actually found my original
character sheet, and realized that somewhere early on, Bull's real name
actually changed completely when I wrote the character background for some
reason. <shrug>
On the flip side, if I know the game and have time to work on it, I'll
sometimes sit down and write up a highly detailed background before I even
think about stats. I'll have a rough idea, especially for Shadowrun since
I know the system so well now, but in general, stats come last.
Last night (and tonight) we worked up some ideas for startinga new
floating game, and I decided to let everyone geta little "funky" with
their characters. I allowed any of the optional character races that I
have on my web page (Vampire, Wendigo, Sasquatch, Windling/Sprite, and
Gargoyle (Disney flavored)) as well as anything else that was balanced and
that I could fit into the Shadowrun World. Amazingly, two of the three
guys stuck with "normal" characters (Voodoun and a Phys Ad), while one
player ended up with a "Time Traveller" with a couple unique abilities.
Whether he's a time traveller of just a nut job is up in the air (at least
as far as I'm concerned :)), and while he's got some serious abuse
potential, I put in some major limitations, plus he gave me a few too.
Like the fact that if he tries to "muck" around with reality, it slaps him
in the face and fixes things :] And that's up to me :]
Of course, along the way I also tunred down, among other things, a Dragon,
A Demon, and Angel, and a member of a Secret Alien Race living in Russia.
<sigh>
Anyways, for this, I got character concepts and some background before we
ever brought out the books... And I honestly prefer to do it that way as a
GM.
That answer your question?
--
Bull -- The Best Ork Decker You Never Met
bull@*******.net ===== bull22@***********.com
http://shadowrun.html.com/users/bull
ICQ: 35931890
====================================================== =
= Order is Illusion! Chaos is Bliss! Got any Fours? = =
======================================================
"Animals have 2 jobs: To taste good and to fit well."
-- Greg Proops, "Vs."
