Decline Character creation screen starts with race selection or worse

[Serus]

Is this trolling?

What is? Brizzt the dark dwarf is, as name suggests, a dwarf (dark) - not a troll.

Other than that, you need to be more specific. It is the Codex though so trolling is highly probable.

 

[Raghar]

The original post. Basically species, and sex were ALWAYS before selecting role or skills..

 

[Humbaba]

Bullshit. The "exception" always disproves the rule in the mind of certain people.

Never said anything of the sort. I just gave an example of an irl black samurai. He's not the norm but since when are rpg adventurers normal people?

 

[dacencora]

Yes, Drizzt’s existence somehow made everyone want non-Evil Drow, so fantasy would certainly be improved without him existing lol. Like I said before, it’s probably only a matter of time before someone with a tentacle fetish writes a “sympathetic” and/or “badass” Mind Flayer and then everyone will want to have non-Evil Mind Flayers. It’s a dumb idea.

 

[Lyric Suite]

He's not the norm but since when are rpg adventurers normal people?

Since forever because the choices you are given are based on archetypes (I.E., the main attraction is the rule, precisely). That's why there were all those restrictions in past RPGs. If i remember correctly, the creator of D&D even stated as such.

 

[JarlFrank]

He's not the norm but since when are rpg adventurers normal people?

Since forever because the choices you are given are based on archetypes (I.E., the main attraction is the rule, precisely). That's why there were all those restrictions in past RPGs. If i remember correctly, the creator of D&D even stated as such.

Your average oldschool D&D party:

Eric the Fighter, son of a minor noble, learned how to fight cause he's a knight. Goes adventuring for the gold.
Cuthbert the Cleric, servant of a benign deity, goes adventuring to thwart evil.
Robert the Ranger, grew up as a woodsman, goes adventuring cause he likes adventure.
Anastasia the Sorceress, studied magic at the academy, goes adventuring because she seeks knowledge.

Your average modern D&D party:
Gul'kurra'varthul the half-tiefling half-orc fighter, got bullied by his tribe for having purple eyes and a black horn on his forehead, became an adventurer to prove that not all of his race are evil!!
Minara bal'Pharra the tiefling sorceress, she has super sharp black claws and her hair is purple, she goes adventuring to prove how awesome she is!!
Pholoros the gnoll ranger, he's a gnoll because the player is a furry, goes adventuring to roll seduction on any beast race the party encounters.
Sojussus the preachy paladin, goes adventuring to stop racism and sexism, doesn't use detect evil spells because he doesn't believe in the concept of naturally evil races.

 

[Humbaba]

I wish I could bust you all out of DnD mind jail but I didn't bring enough dynamite.

 

[Serus]

He's not the norm but since when are rpg adventurers normal people?

Since forever because the choices you are given are based on archetypes (I.E., the main attraction is the rule, precisely). That's why there were all those restrictions in past RPGs. If i remember correctly, the creator of D&D even stated as such.

Your average oldschool D&D party:

Eric the Fighter, son of a minor noble, learned how to fight cause he's a knight. Goes adventuring for the gold.
Cuthbert the Cleric, servant of a benign deity, goes adventuring to thwart evil.
Robert the Ranger, grew up as a woodsman, goes adventuring cause he likes adventure.
Anastasia the Sorceress, studied magic at the academy, goes adventuring because she seeks knowledge.

Your average modern D&D party:
Gul'kurra'varthul the half-tiefling half-orc fighter, got bullied by his tribe for having purple eyes and a black horn on his forehead, became an adventurer to prove that not all of his race are evil!!
Minara bal'Pharra the tiefling sorceress, she has super sharp black claws and her hair is purple, she goes adventuring to prove how awesome she is!!
Pholoros the gnoll ranger, he's a gnoll because the player is a furry, goes adventuring to roll seduction on any beast race the party encounters.
Sojussus the preachy paladin, goes adventuring to stop racism and sexism, doesn't use detect evil spells because he doesn't believe in the concept of naturally evil races.

... and with 5 players: Brizzt the dark dwarf, 6 feet tall, dark green skin. Goes adventuring because in his universe someone forgot to write Drizzt character.

 

[Sykar]

Real RPGs you answer a bunch of question only to rerolly anyway because you are disgusted by what you got.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Your average oldschool D&D party:

Eric the Fighter, son of a minor noble, learned how to fight cause he's a knight. Goes adventuring for the gold.
Cuthbert the Cleric, servant of a benign deity, goes adventuring to thwart evil.
Robert the Ranger, grew up as a woodsman, goes adventuring cause he likes adventure.
Anastasia the Sorceress, studied magic at the academy, goes adventuring because she seeks knowledge.

Your average modern D&D party:
Gul'kurra'varthul the half-tiefling half-orc fighter, got bullied by his tribe for having purple eyes and a black horn on his forehead, became an adventurer to prove that not all of his race are evil!!
Minara bal'Pharra the tiefling sorceress, she has super sharp black claws and her hair is purple, she goes adventuring to prove how awesome she is!!
Pholoros the gnoll ranger, he's a gnoll because the player is a furry, goes adventuring to roll seduction on any beast race the party encounters.
Sojussus the preachy paladin, goes adventuring to stop racism and sexism, doesn't use detect evil spells because he doesn't believe in the concept of naturally evil races.

First party is extremely boring but the second one ... Well, I guess it all depends on your DM.
Gnoll ranger could be fun though, only, he can't enter any city during daytime without risking his skin.

Still, I like unusual or original characters making use of forgotten rules or optional ones.

We're far from the topic though.

I wonder how many codexers prefer a one page character creation screen compared to kingmaker, for example where just selection your character's genre takes one whole page.
Well, ToEE did something similar but at least it was really fast to go through all the different pages.

 

[Blutwurstritter]

Your average oldschool D&D party:

Eric the Fighter, son of a minor noble, learned how to fight cause he's a knight. Goes adventuring for the gold.
Cuthbert the Cleric, servant of a benign deity, goes adventuring to thwart evil.
Robert the Ranger, grew up as a woodsman, goes adventuring cause he likes adventure.
Anastasia the Sorceress, studied magic at the academy, goes adventuring because she seeks knowledge.

Your average modern D&D party:
Gul'kurra'varthul the half-tiefling half-orc fighter, got bullied by his tribe for having purple eyes and a black horn on his forehead, became an adventurer to prove that not all of his race are evil!!
Minara bal'Pharra the tiefling sorceress, she has super sharp black claws and her hair is purple, she goes adventuring to prove how awesome she is!!
Pholoros the gnoll ranger, he's a gnoll because the player is a furry, goes adventuring to roll seduction on any beast race the party encounters.
Sojussus the preachy paladin, goes adventuring to stop racism and sexism, doesn't use detect evil spells because he doesn't believe in the concept of naturally evil races.

First party is extremely boring but the second one ... Well, I guess it all depends on your DM.
Gnoll ranger could be fun though, only, he can't enter any city during daytime without risking his skin.

Still, I like unusual or original characters making use of forgotten rules or optional ones.

We're far from the topic though.

I wonder how many codexers prefer a one page character creation screen compared to kingmaker, for example where just selection your character's genre takes one whole page.
Well, ToEE did something similar but at least it was really fast to go through all the different pages.

I prefer games where the focus is on the adventure and not on the adventurer. The second group sounds like something to me that people would create that love to dress-up, spending more time on the in-game character cosmetics than anything else while the first one sounds like something that I would create, well, to go adventuring. Original characters are fine but those characters sound like the worst kind of "originality". Characters can be interesting without being freaks.

But I agree that the character creation/levelup procedure in Pathfinder Kingmaker is tedious. That could be arranged in a clearer way to avoid the problem that you mentioned in the first post and a single screen format would be much better.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I wish I could bust you all out of DnD mind jail but I didn't bring enough dynamite.

There are two types of RPGs: Dungeons & Dragons and games derived from Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[Tyranicon]

I wish I could bust you all out of DnD mind jail but I didn't bring enough dynamite.

There are two types of RPGs: Dungeons & Dragons and games derived from Dungeons & Dragons.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

in my own ruleset race choice HUGELY shaped your future playstyle, so it made perfect sense to me to pick it first.
in a more general way, you're born first, and then you choose what you want to do, so it makes sense here too.

 

[plem]

one thing that bothers me in games with portraits is when they leave portrait selection for the very end so only after choosing race, class and gender you find out there's no good match. PoE is an example of that, and it also doesn't let you choose your background until you've allocated atributes which is bizarre due to the fact that backgrounds give attribute bonuses, so you'll probably have to go back to adjust.

when it comes to choosing race before class, it usually doesn't matter as long as I have enough information to make a decision. if it's just standard D&D races then I already know obvious things like dwarves being good fighters, elves being good wizards, etc. if it's a different system with legally distinct races then it's all the more important to have good descriptions and tool tips. Wizardry and similar games tend to have absolutely terrible character creation sections because half-way through them you get random bonus points which you usually can't reroll, instead having to start over completely, and at first there's no way of knowing what's a high or a low roll.

 

[Sarathiour]

In Kingdom Come Deliverance you play Henry, no gender options, but you can change his hair and whatnot at the bathhouse. Those were the only two games I could think of.

I vaguely remember Geral also being able to go to the barber in the Witcher 2.

Also redemption story were a thing long before DnD, so it was a given than somebody was going to write about a nice goblin or something. What matter is what you're going to do with it, and so it make sense that there is some restriction based on race and sex, because a coherent world is not going to roll blindly with OC drow paladin, and dev probably have better thing to do than writing a whole separate story and interaction for people bend on playing a special snowflake.

At least that was originally the case.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I wish I could bust you all out of DnD mind jail but I didn't bring enough dynamite.

There are two types of RPGs: Dungeons & Dragons and games derived from Dungeons & Dragons.

Starflight lineage comes from Traveller

 

[Serus]

I wish I could bust you all out of DnD mind jail but I didn't bring enough dynamite.

There are two types of RPGs: Dungeons & Dragons and games derived from Dungeons & Dragons.

Starflight lineage comes from Traveller

What is this Traveller you talk about? Must be a less known setting for D&D.

 

[Reinhardt]

Still, I like unusual or original characters making use of forgotten rules or optional ones.

i guess that's why you play men in dresses in battle brothers

 

[Serus]

I don't get this "one page so bestest and much important" theory. Number of pages for character sheet is just a matter of interface, and not an important one compared to the interface during actual play. Sure a single page character sheet is more elegant and easy to use* but it isn't a big deal. I suppose it might be if some spends more hours in character creation than in the game proper but that only applies to min-maxing autists (like me) in very few games.


*Unless you have a really complex system with hundreds of stats and other stuff. There is high probability that it sucks.

 

[Lyric Suite]

First party is extremely boring

More like you have been peer pressured into thinking anything that is normal is quaint and boring, because moderns can't understand depth, so they seek meaning and sophistication in breath instead.

Rather than digging deeper into the form and archetype to tap into a more profound and meaningful essence of said form or archetype, moderns think to be "intelligent" is to break the form into a self-defeating quest to be freed of the confines of the relative within the relative itself.

This is the root cause of modern art and this relativization of classes and races in modern RPGs is yet another application of the same mindset, albeit in a more childish form.

 

[Maxwell's Demon]

Actually, creating an Orc scholar would be interesting in terms of playing with a massive disadvantage.

Come to think of it, why would a moderate or low INT be a disadvantage for a scholar? Have you seen academia? It's not filled with our best and brightest. That seems like a perfectly fitting statistic to me.

Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. -- George Bernard Shaw

 

[Serus]

Actually, creating an Orc scholar would be interesting in terms of playing with a massive disadvantage.

Come to think of it, why would a moderate or low INT be a disadvantage for a scholar? Have you seen academia? It's not filled our best and brightest. That seems like a perfectly fitting statistic to me.

Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. -- George Bernard Shaw

I suppose he meant from the point of view of mechanics but i like your way thinking.

 

[RNGsus]

Real RPGs you answer a bunch of question only to rerolly anyway because you are disgusted by what you got.

Half my games are spent planning and rolling character creation.

I see op's point if race and role don't count for nothin why include them at all? Why not just have dress up dolly screen and jump straight to saving the world from toxic masculinity.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

racial restriction is ok and support worldbuulding

we just have to make human have half the maximum level of elves and dwarves in any class because they are short lived and thus has less time to get mastery than elves and dwarves