When Do Limited Options Become Stifling?

[Mechalich]

often, trying to provide build granularity ends up giving you a menu of directly-comparable things of varying value...but all the same cost.

In fairness, matching value against cost is among the most difficult things to do, in pretty much any system once you escape from pure numbers. For example, even mathematically robust tRPGs regularly fail to value status effects properly, such that they are most often either useless or the one true path to power. Any state in between is quite rare. And that's for purely combat-based abilities on a grid. Trying to properly match supernatural abilities that can be used more or less at any time against each other is a nearly impossible challenge. There's no way to just math-hammer results effectively, the only solution is trial-and-error through massive amounts of playtesting.

And, when it comes to playtesting, WotC is basically the only company with the money necessary to significantly playtest soft abilities of this kind. TTRPGs aren't really amenable to the kind of 'public beta or public test server approaches used by certain cRPGs, and those methods have problems of their own such as providing a preference towards the hardcore contingent at the expense of the far more numerous casuals. Once upon a time, White-Wolf theoretically had the money to perform extensive playtesting, but...didn't (somewhat infamously, the Guide to the Technocracy credits two playtesting groups, which appears to have been twice as many as the average product received).

So, while WotC is clearly not doing as well as they could on this front, many D&D spells have been clearly unbalanced for decades at this point, everyone else is stuck giving things their best guess and hoping it works out.

[gbaji]

I mean yeah, you can make a generic culture for anything. But lets be honest, a tribe of Lizardfolk that does that will inherently be more interesting than a tribe of Humans that do that because you don't see Lizardfolk in the everyday world. Where as I wouldn't be surprised to see that sort of idea taking hold as some sort of weird cult in the middle of America. One is an interesting tribe that helps to highlight the differences between Human and Lizardfolk culture and morality. The other would be a group that I ignore cause they're just another bunch of crazy Humans, and probably a cult that we'll fight later, about on the same level as an Elemental Cult.

My example was purely to show that any cultural differences can be generated without requiring racial differences as well.

One needs to ask the question: Is what makes this interesting the fact that they are lizardmen instead of human? Or the fact that they have a strange/alien culture with different rules and whatnot, so you have to (are able to?) roleplay characters from that area very differently and also roleplay how you interact with characters (PC and NPC) from that area differently? My position is that it's the latter that makes these "interesting" and "non-stiffling".

And I guess my further point is that within any given race/class limits, there are still a ton of different types of characters you can play. I tend to focus more on character traits/personaltiy/whatever as an internal component of the character itself, rather than as some sort of racial attribute. And yes, my experience is that many players use race as a crutch to create those things instead. Which is what leads them to want to play other races.

That's not to say that I run a lot of games that are "human only" or some such. In fact, I can only think of two game systems I've ever had that requirement: Call of Cthulhu and Paranoia (cause that's all you have to play). So no. I don't consider racial restrictions to be stiffling at all. If you can't figure out how to play a given personality as whatever races are available in the game, that's really kinda on you IMO. And all that's left aside from that are physical traits, which yeah, maybe folks want, but... well... that's an even longer discussion to have.

Sure, you try to find a compromise, some option the player has overlooked or was not aware of and that catches his interest. But the main problem is "none of the available options seems like something i would enjoy playing" and that is not really something that can be directly tackled without changing the available options. Sure, a GM might try a sales pitch to convince the player they would have fun but IME that rarely worls out.

I'm honestly curious. What exactly do you think is being limited here? It's not like I'm presenting exactly 8 character templates, complete with backstory and personality, and that's all you have to choose from or something. It's "here's the list of races who live in the area" and "here's the various cultural organizations which exist there", so "here's the <somewhat long> list of different types of classes you can choose from".

And honestly? I most commonly play in games that don't have classes at all. So... Um... You can be anything you want to be. I'm literally running a game right now, where one of the characters is the bastard(ess?) daughter of a somewhat crazed healer guy who takes his fertility goddesses ideas literally, who grew up in the healing temple, but at an early age discovered that she really didn't like healing (sick people are gross!), so she ran away and lived on the street for a number of years, picking up some theifly skills, until she was picked up by a priest of the local theatre guild, who got her into street performances, and has been mentoring her from there.

That's not enough variation and choices? They're literally limited only by "what is there". And there's a heck of a lot of "there" to pick from, and combinations of "there" as well. I once ran a character who started out life as a soldier, but liked gambling (a bit too much), then got picked up and recruited by a cult of gamblers, left the military and started working the bars and streets to make money, sometimes helping out the local thieves types as an enforcer (he was a big tough guy, so what sort of thing do you think he did for the local street types? He was certainly more lookout than second story guy, right?).

So you've got a character with some healing skills, and some thiefly skills, and some performance skills (acrobatics, juggling, etc). Another with some decent fighting skills, but also gambling skills, and some of the less stealth related thiefly skills (lock picking, rope work, forgery, etc). How is that limiting? And note, that this is before even considering what race this person may be, and what other additional stuff you might add in based on starting culture, and their relationship on that level.

But i can't say i have ever had players tell me what they want and what is fun for them and me knowing it better then them.

Not that exact sequence, no. But I have absolutely had players ask for something very specific (like the addition of a specific class/race/religion in a game), and for me to look around at the setting and suggest an alternative that fits into the setting better and had the player find it quite enjoyable. On a couple occasions, I've even had players comment to me that they would have never considered that particular class/race/religion combination before, but had played <the thing they asked for> several times (which was why they asked for it), and are glad that I didn't let them do it, because they've actually expanded their list of "things they like to play" as a result.

I think that there's a lot of range here, and we may be quibbling over the far edges a bit too much. Most players are going to have no trouble finding a large range of "things I'll have fun playing" in any given setting. Rarely have I ever encountered someone who just refused to play anything but "narrow list of things", which is usually what has to happen for there to be any conflict or issue at all. And yeah, IME in most of those cases, it's the player really restricting themselves far far more than anything I could do with my game setting. I can't say why some players do this, but I've seen it (rarely thankfully). But it's pretty much the only time this comes up, and yeah, those are the cases where I'm also going to put my foot down.

I don't particular like rewriting a setting just to include a thing a player finds cool as well. If i have a player that really likes X, i will generally keep that in mind the next time i choose a system/setting, not rewrite the current one unless it would fit in pretty seamlessly.

Oh absolutely. I've had players ask to play in a game like X or Y or whatever, so they can explore different ideas. Some work out great. Some are hilarious failures. Usually great fun anyway though.

But i do choose settings that have things my players like. Often after asking what my players like and have an open table discussion, especially with new members. And if i by some mistake turn up with something they don't want to play, then i shelf it and look for a better fit. I don't go "Well, just try to play those characters you are totally not interested in in a place you find dull, that will all change during play."

I guess it depends on how invested I and the rest of the players are in the game and setting. If it's some new thing we just started and we run through a short adventure or two and the players just aren't enjoying it, we'll move on to something else. No biggie. But if 4 out of 5 players are having a good time, and I'm having a good time writing stuff for them, and one player is not enjoying their character? Create a new character maybe?

Again. I guess I just find the entire concept that someone could not find anything at all interesting to play in a given setting somewhat alien. Game system not fun? Seen that (a lot actually). Game setting/campaign not clicking? Seen that. But this thread was about stiffling player character choices. And I don't think I've ever run an game (other than some very very short one shots) with anything near a limitation on character types so tight that a player (let alone many players) coudln't come up with something they were not only interested in, but excited about playing.

I think the key here is making the actual play interesting. You can take any set of characters being played by the characters and make things interesting and exciting if the actual adventure they're doing is interesting and exciting. IMO, the opposite just isn't true. No amount of interesting character choices on start up is going to make up for a boring and overly predictable (or overly random!) campaign. I'm pretty sure I could start a campaign by handing out a half dozen vritually identical characters to the players, and have every single one of them totally invested in the characters, and enjoying their growth and adventures as they play.

I often try to make the point that 90% of the character should be about what happens *after* they start adventuring, not before. Backstory and origin is great and all, but that's just a starting point. At my table, if I ask my players "list the top 10 most interesting/amusing/important things about all of the characters you've ever played in my games", I'm reasonably certain that none of them would list a single thing that was part of any character's backstory. That's just the way I run my games.

I guess there's two ways of looking at it - how much is excluded, and how much is included.

And no matter how much is excluded, there's an unlimited set of characters inside just about any kind of bounds - even single race, single class, or single alignment. Most characters in most fiction are just plain vanilla humans, with no special abilities, and yet they are still very distinct.

So I think it's just a matter of knowing what the boundaries are, and picking a point inside that still-limitless space.

Pretty much my position as well. I'd also add that it can be somewhat of a "glass half empty/full" situation. Depends on how you view things. And yeah, it also helps a ton to *not* play in a stock setting in the first place. When you eliminate expectations, then it's more about "what is available", and less about "why isn't this thing here?". I don't have to remove anything if it wasn't there in the first place.

In my experience, people that hate boundaries will always want to pick something outside of the boundaries, no matter where those are drawn. The draw to them literally is being outside the boundary. People that can work with boundaries are mostly happy regardless of where they are.

I don't know if it's quite that direct (although I suppose it could be for some people). I really do think that some people do believe that variety is dependent on being "different" but maybe can't create those difference themselves, so they fall to pre-defined differences instead. It's a lot easier to point to some obscure class and say "that is different, so my character will be different if I run that". It's a lot harder to look at a more standard class and say "what differences can I make to this character?" Also, many players are looking more at stats on sheets than personalities inside their own head. So more "rollplaying" versus "roleplaying". Which can be where dependence on race/class differences comes into play.

I had said it in a previous post of mine on the last page: But Limiting options becomes stifling once you are no longer able to effectively create your idea. And the key word is "effectively". For me, that's mechanical builds, cause I find the mechanics of a game to be far more fun, engaging, and interesting than RP. For others, that could be RP. But in either case, the line remains in the same place: The moment you can't effectively create what you set out to make, then its stifling.

And I think that's where we may differ signiicantly. To me, the mechanical differences are not what should be focused on. I guess, if it's a very mechanical game, that may be true. But that's somewhat circular. I don't tend to run overly mechanical games. There's no single ability or whatnot that's going to win the day for the party, so having some special unique set of such things isn't really much of an advantage. It's there. And certainly players may enjoy various different things. But I'm not going to reward some sort of min/maxed character build exercise or something in my games. Not going to penalize it either, but...

And again, I mostly play in classless/leveless games. So there's no such thing as "I can't do this unless <class X> is available to play". Just doesn't exist. You want to be good at "some strange combination of things"? Well. Take that combination of skills and abilities and we'll see how that works for you. But guess what? Outside of those skills/abilities/spells/whatever, it's going to be about the choices you make that really matter in terms of success and failure. Sure, your specific abilities are going to matter in terms of the specifics of what you do within a party structure, but that's about it. And a heck of a lot of what your character becomes over time is going to be about what you choose to do with that character during play, and sometime some random stuff too. It happens. Always the choice of the player which direction the character goes in, but sometimes things that happen along the way may present new options and directiions that the player would have never considered at start up.

The needs of a fun game and a compelling story are often in tension, this is one of the many reasons video game adaptations often fail. This is compounded in that a writer will often produce a fictional setting specifically to tell a single story. The world only needs to support that one scenario. A TTRPG setting however, needs to build dedicated fans who play many campaigns over time. That means producing new and different options for veteran players who have already used all the old ones. The problem with this is that option creep destroys both mechanics and fluff as they accrete.

Yup. Which is a very good reason to *not* make "new and interesting" about introducing or allowing new races/classes/whatever with new powers/abilities. That often is more about increasing mechanical capabilities and may have downsides over the long haul.

I would also argue, strongly, that firm limits on "what is here" is vitally important if you want to actually build a long lasting game setting that can last through multiple campaigns, with multiple different PC parties running through different adventures over time. That's not to say you can't have a lot of variation, but game settings tend to blow up if you don't keep at least some geographical stuff consistent. I've tried to run "kitchen sink" campaigns, and while they are fun in the short term, it's nearly impossible to make them work long term.

Ironically, having limits based on "what is in the area", allows for you to create variation by moving the location within the setting. If my players want to run with a set of different characters, we can start up some in a different part of the same game world, where there are different races living there, and different cultures, social structures, religions, magic availability, etc. Heck. Some can be different tech levels too. We once decided to run some characters on a particular far off isolated island in the game world, with pretty primative folks living on it. We're talking stone axes and simple shamanistic magic. It was a blast. Sure. These characters were never going to rise to "world spanning" power levels, but it didn't change that relative to what we were dealing with, we still had tons of fun.

I ran another entire (pretty long) set of adventures starting out characters who were part of an "evil" empire. Of course, from their perspective they were the good guys, and working to root out the "evil outsiders". Some of our most interesting adventures occurred in that one (I did a creepy "children of the corn" type of scenario with this group that my players still talk about today).

If the entire setting is "flat" (meaning you allow everything everywhere), then there's nothing you can really do to expand it, and not a lot of reason for the PCs to actually go anywhere (meet the new kingdom, same as the old kingdom). Avoiding that in the starting area, allows you to expand over time, introducing more "things" as the players explore the world. Which makes the world actually interesting to explore. Dunno. I just find that starting small and simple and then building over time (but also keeping each other area similarly "small and simple", but with differences in specifics) tends to work best. It allows for a wide assortment of "things that can exist", while restricting "things that are present right here" down to a manageable level.

[Duff]

Yup. The first is key IMO. I think too many players spend too much time "designing" their charcters, complete with long complicated history and motivations and planned story arc they want the GM to create for them.

Thankyou for the general vote of confidence. On this specific point I disgree with you.
Thre's no wrong way to enjoy your roleplaying

[Satinavian]

I'm honestly curious. What exactly do you think is being limited here? It's not like I'm presenting exactly 8 character templates, complete with backstory and personality, and that's all you have to choose from or something. It's "here's the list of races who live in the area" and "here's the various cultural organizations which exist there", so "here's the <somewhat long> list of different types of classes you can choose from".

I didn't say that specifically what you are offering is too limiting. I don't know your games. I did say that when neither the setting nor the character options inspire the player, then it is too limiting. I might go back to this point a couple of times.

And honestly? I most commonly play in games that don't have classes at all. So... Um... You can be anything you want to be. I'm literally running a game right now, where one of the characters is the bastard(ess?) daughter of a somewhat crazed healer guy who takes his fertility goddesses ideas literally, who grew up in the healing temple, but at an early age discovered that she really didn't like healing (sick people are gross!), so she ran away and lived on the street for a number of years, picking up some theifly skills, until she was picked up by a priest of the local theatre guild, who got her into street performances, and has been mentoring her from there.

I play mostly in classless systems as well.

That said, if this is meant to show how flexible and unique the PCs in your game are, it really falls flat. So you have basically a thief character with some healing powers she is not particularly invested in and the classical "I cut bonds with my family and go on a different path in my life than my parent", which is just backstory and so common that it is pretty much clichee.

How is that limiting?

Those are utterly bog standard characters. Nothing wrong with them, but i wouldn't be surprised if some people find them too boring.

I think that there's a lot of range here, and we may be quibbling over the far edges a bit too much.

Probably. If your players alwways find interesting things to play in your games, your games are obviously not too limiting.

Most players are going to have no trouble finding a large range of "things I'll have fun playing" in any given setting. Rarely have I ever encountered someone who just refused to play anything but "narrow list of things", which is usually what has to happen for there to be any conflict or issue at all.

Nope. Settings being too narrow happens all the time even for players that generally would play a lot of different characters.

An example would be a group wanting to start a V:tM campaign and a player saying "Nah, i don't like vampires. I'll sit out this one." That is obviously too narrow a focus for this player. And stuff like this happens all the time.

I guess it depends on how invested I and the rest of the players are in the game and setting. If it's some new thing we just started and we run through a short adventure or two and the players just aren't enjoying it, we'll move on to something else. No biggie. But if 4 out of 5 players are having a good time, and I'm having a good time writing stuff for them, and one player is not enjoying their character? Create a new character maybe?

Yes. Or quit if the player thinks that would not help. Of course if you have a campaign with a happy GM and four happy players you keep that one running. But don't expect that just because 4 people enjoy it, the fifth one will eventually change their opinion and enjoy it as well. Tastes are different.

I think the key here is making the actual play interesting. You can take any set of characters being played by the characters and make things interesting and exciting if the actual adventure they're doing is interesting and exciting.

No.
When you are pitching the campaign, you can't rely on the adventures to make it interesting. You basically have to convince with the setting here. And during character creation, you can't rely on the actual play either, the players must find something they think would be fun to play in your character options.
When the actual play starts, players are already committed and characters made. That is too late to show off how that whole campaign might be fun.

I often try to make the point that 90% of the character should be about what happens *after* they start adventuring, not before. Backstory and origin is great and all, but that's just a starting point. At my table, if I ask my players "list the top 10 most interesting/amusing/important things about all of the characters you've ever played in my games", I'm reasonably certain that none of them would list a single thing that was part of any character's backstory. That's just the way I run my games.

If I would ask that, i probably would get a lot of events where characters could shine using their particular mechanical quirks or connect the adventure plot with their personality or backstory.
I would hardly get situations where the characters exact abilities and behavior don't really matter and would basically replaceable with other adventurers of the same power.

And again, I mostly play in classless/leveless games. So there's no such thing as "I can't do this unless <class X> is available to play". Just doesn't exist. You want to be good at "some strange combination of things"? Well. Take that combination of skills and abilities and we'll see how that works for you.

Obviously classless games tend to be less restrictive in the first place so it is more likely that a player can make a character they like.
However even those games tend to be as limited if not more limited when it comes to species and the important question is always what kind of abilities are even available.

Ironically, having limits based on "what is in the area", allows for you to create variation by moving the location within the setting. If my players want to run with a set of different characters, we can start up some in a different part of the same game world, where there are different races living there, and different cultures, social structures, religions, magic availability, etc. Heck. Some can be different tech levels too.

Sure. I prefer that as well. However :

1) If you consider all the possible starting locations, why choose a particularly boring and generic first as you seem to suggest ? Why not start at an interesting place from the get go even if the other interesting places are beyond the horizon for a while ?

2) You can only choose a different location if there are different locations. Which your approach of "make a starting location and maybe add something else in later when the adventurers go there" does not provide.

[kyoryu]

(This is agreement, expansion, and discussion, not argument, just to be clear up front)

And I guess my further point is that within any given race/class limits, there are still a ton of different types of characters you can play. I tend to focus more on character traits/personaltiy/whatever as an internal component of the character itself, rather than as some sort of racial attribute. And yes, my experience is that many players use race as a crutch to create those things instead. Which is what leads them to want to play other races.

I find the number one thing to make a character interesting is goals or values. Preferably more than one. Preferably ones that have a reasonable chance of coming into conflict with each other.

Someone that wants to be rich can be interesting. Somebody that wants to be rich, and wants to protect their family can be more interesting. Somebody that wants to be rich, protect their family, overthrow the evil ruler, and learn ancient mysteries is awesome - there's so many ways that those can conflict, and make interesting conflict.

In Star Wars, Han was pretty much the most interesting character. He's the only one that really had two motivations - be a good person, and pay off Jabba. Those conflicted with each other. Everybody else was, frankly, fairly one-dimensional.

It was only in ESB that Luke started getting different motivations - become a Jedi vs. confront his father vs. save his friends. And that's where he really started to shine.

There's two problems with this in RPGs.

1. Most RPGs don't expose this, so people don't think about it and learn how to do it.
2. A lot of RPG structures are such that your character motivations don't matter. You're playing through the adventure path, and if the adventure path doesn't care about those things, they're not gonna matter at all.

So you've got a character with some healing skills, and some thiefly skills, and some performance skills (acrobatics, juggling, etc). Another with some decent fighting skills, but also gambling skills, and some of the less stealth related thiefly skills (lock picking, rope work, forgery, etc). How is that limiting? And note, that this is before even considering what race this person may be, and what other additional stuff you might add in based on starting culture, and their relationship on that level.

Yeah, even that is, I think the least interesting bit of a character as a character. As a mechanical game piece, sure.

I think the key here is making the actual play interesting. You can take any set of characters being played by the characters and make things interesting and exciting if the actual adventure they're doing is interesting and exciting. IMO, the opposite just isn't true. No amount of interesting character choices on start up is going to make up for a boring and overly predictable (or overly random!) campaign. I'm pretty sure I could start a campaign by handing out a half dozen vritually identical characters to the players, and have every single one of them totally invested in the characters, and enjoying their growth and adventures as they play.

Yeah, I'd agree with this. And how to make an interesting campaign is a very interesting topic (there's multiple ways to do it, for starters).

I don't know if it's quite that direct (although I suppose it could be for some people). I really do think that some people do believe that variety is dependent on being "different" but maybe can't create those difference themselves, so they fall to pre-defined differences instead. It's a lot easier to point to some obscure class and say "that is different, so my character will be different if I run that". It's a lot harder to look at a more standard class and say "what differences can I make to this character?" Also, many players are looking more at stats on sheets than personalities inside their own head. So more "rollplaying" versus "roleplaying". Which can be where dependence on race/class differences comes into play.

This gets to my point 1 - it's just not a skill that most RPGs really help you with, so a lot of players never really figure out how to do that. So they grab for what's available.

I would also argue, strongly, that firm limits on "what is here" is vitally important if you want to actually build a long lasting game setting that can last through multiple campaigns, with multiple different PC parties running through different adventures over time. That's not to say you can't have a lot of variation, but game settings tend to blow up if you don't keep at least some geographical stuff consistent. I've tried to run "kitchen sink" campaigns, and while they are fun in the short term, it's nearly impossible to make them work long term.

I've found that it's very hard to make a consistent, believable world if you have a truly kitchen-sink type setting. And while I've taken a fairly extreme position here (all humans, no special abilities), in reality I'm generally not going to go that far for any kind of genre where that's not really expected. Though, you know, Game of Thrones came realllllly close.

Ironically, having limits based on "what is in the area", allows for you to create variation by moving the location within the setting. If my players want to run with a set of different characters, we can start up some in a different part of the same game world, where there are different races living there, and different cultures, social structures, religions, magic availability, etc. Heck. Some can be different tech levels too. We once decided to run some characters on a particular far off isolated island in the game world, with pretty primative folks living on it. We're talking stone axes and simple shamanistic magic. It was a blast. Sure. These characters were never going to rise to "world spanning" power levels, but it didn't change that relative to what we were dealing with, we still had tons of fun.

As a video game developer, there was a game called Hellgate: London. It was made by some ex-Diablo devs. It didn't do great, and there were reasons for it.

One of the most common criticisms of it was that it had no variety to the locales. However, in actuality, there were as many different tilesets as D2 had (and D2 didn't get those criticisms).

Where HG:L failed with that was that their design was such that you entered all of those tilesets very quickly, and the entire game cycled rapidly through them. Meanwhile, D2 had distinct areas, each of which had a much more limited set of tilesets available to it. But changing which ones they dealt with (along with which critters) gave a feeling of progression and change and variety even though the actual variety was the same between the two games.

IOW, people seem to view variety not based on actual variety, but on transitions. Adding more things to the general background doesn't really add variety - going from one set of things to the others does.

There was another comment that you made that I can't find, about backstory and expecting the GM to write for it. I think that's mostly just a play structure/culture of play issue - see this article: https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.c...s-of-play.html . There are some issues with that article, but it's a good starting point. (Specifically, the description of classic is pretty off, and I think that it overly-conflates storygames and narrative games, which are pretty different)

Expecting a GM to kind of tailor the adventure to your character (but still basically write it and have you go through it) is the OC/neotrad style of game, while you're probably more of the narrative or classic style.

[Quertus]

IOW, people seem to view variety not based on actual variety, but on transitions. Adding more things to the general background doesn't really add variety - going from one set of things to the others does.

It's almost like you're saying that variety is created from limiting options: That the Wizard and the Fighter are different, and promote variety, because the Fighter can't cast spells, and the Wizard can't swing a sword to save his life.

And, sure, different things (classes, areas, whatever) having (and, thereby, lacking) different features (abilities, tile sets, etc) really helps promote the variety of a difference in feel between the things.

But I'm not sure that justifies calling "The acceptable characters are [Druid, Ranger, Warforged, Necropolitan] - pick one" "variety".

[Satinavian]

In Star Wars, Han was pretty much the most interesting character.

Eh. I found him the most boring of the main cast. Even in the first one, Luke and Obi-Wan had the force which was somewhat mysterious most of the film (though never well resolved), Leia had all the politics in the background (though never properly explored), Chewie had his people, even the druids, their abilities and limitations and their role in the society were interesting (also not properly explored).
But Han was just some smuggler indebted to the mob. Nothing special. Everyone else was somehow linked to elements where you wanted to learn more about the setting. But Han could have easily be transplanted into other settings without much change. That is why he was the least interesting one.

[gbaji]

That said, if this is meant to show how flexible and unique the PCs in your game are, it really falls flat. So you have basically a thief character with some healing powers she is not particularly invested in and the classical "I cut bonds with my family and go on a different path in my life than my parent", which is just backstory and so common that it is pretty much clichee.

Those are utterly bog standard characters. Nothing wrong with them, but i wouldn't be surprised if some people find them too boring.

I'm curious what you consider "interesting" then. I don't want to project here, but it seems as though it's all about having some special/unique powers/abilities. And I get that. But here's the problem: If the race/class combination that gives these powers/abilities is "available where you start", then that's something that a lot of other people have too (including potentially thousands of NPCs right there in your starting area). So that's not actually "special" or "unique". If you really want the character and only that one character to have that ability/power/whatever, then that enters into a whole different area I call "wish fulfillment fantasy", that I'm not terribly interested as a GM in running.

I've also found that while players (especially newer/younger players) often really want to play these kinds of things, they're often the first characters abandoned quickly once the novelty wears off. Then they want me to allow them to play something else "special". Then another. And another. Each one straining the credulity of the campaign, while adding pretty much nothing. Sorry. Been there. Done that. As Akbar says: "it's a trap!". And it's absoultely being used by the player as a crutch.

If you mean something else by not "bog standard" and "boring", then please elaborate.

Nope. Settings being too narrow happens all the time even for players that generally would play a lot of different characters.

An example would be a group wanting to start a V:tM campaign and a player saying "Nah, i don't like vampires. I'll sit out this one." That is obviously too narrow a focus for this player. And stuff like this happens all the time.

That's a game system, not a game setting. And sure, the thread is just about "limiting options", so that qualifies, I guess. But if we're playing V:tM, then that's the game we agreed on playing. That's a decision made prior to what the setting is (location, available classes/races, etc). I'm speaking specifically about playing a game in which there is the potential for <list of races/classes/whatever> within the game rules, but the GM sets up a starting area where <subset of that list> are available to actually play, and examining whether that's actually "stiffling" to the players. Going directly to a game system where the only rules that exist assume players are playing vampires is a bit off that subject.

Yes. Or quit if the player thinks that would not help. Of course if you have a campaign with a happy GM and four happy players you keep that one running. But don't expect that just because 4 people enjoy it, the fifth one will eventually change their opinion and enjoy it as well. Tastes are different.

Sure. If we're playing a high fantasy game and the player really wants to play dark gritty sci-fi, or steampunk, or something. I guess. Again, that's not really in the scope of what I'm talking about here. And yeah. I do think that's more about the player having limited scope than the game. I'm not going to adjust my sci-fi cyberpunk game to allow someone to play a half dragon wizard, just because that's what they really want to do. Can we assume that we're sticking to character options that at least fit the theme itself in some way?

And if not, then those are really really bizarre requirements by the player (and frankly extremely selfish and petty ones), not some problem with the GM and their setting.

When you are pitching the campaign, you can't rely on the adventures to make it interesting. You basically have to convince with the setting here. And during character creation, you can't rely on the actual play either, the players must find something they think would be fun to play in your character options.

When the actual play starts, players are already committed and characters made. That is too late to show off how that whole campaign might be fun.

I think this is a bit circular though. If your starting assumption is that "my character must be interesting and unique from roll up", then you're already in the mindset that this must be the case. And you will find the absense of this limiting. But you're also limiting the "growth" that character could experience in the game itself. I prefer to start characters from *before* the point in their lives where "interesting and unque" things happen to them, and then actually play that stuff out.

I'm also not sure how "interesting character startups" make the "setting" more interesting. I'm pitching the setting, not a collection of stat blocks the players can play. Teling the players "you can play <whole bunch of interesting stuff> in this game, may appeal to the "kid in the candy store" part of all of us, but it's not going to keep the players attentions for very long. Telling them a bit about the game world, what is there, what background they know, what events are going on, and otherwise providing lots of hooks for characters to use to motivate them into being PCs in the first place, is far far more interesting.

Better yet, having that basic background, and then launching them into a plot/hook which sets them off on a series of adventures, with twists and turns, and lots of abiltiy to interact with and change the world around them, is always going to be more interesting then a series of "how can I use my special powers this week" encounters. But focus on characters on roll up leads one to the latter. Which I actually find very tropish and boring.

Obviously classless games tend to be less restrictive in the first place so it is more likely that a player can make a character they like.
However even those games tend to be as limited if not more limited when it comes to species and the important question is always what kind of abilities are even available.

It's interesting to me, because you keep mentioning abilities. Why abilities? Why abilities that are some innate racial thing? That's not actually going to make the game more interesting at all. That's not to say that different races in games I run don't have some differences in terms of stats and often senses, but rarely actual "special abilities". I just find that boring. I'd rather that characters have abilities based on there actual... um... abilities. Skills, items, spells, and yes, the occassional rare special gift/ability or whatnot, obtained along the way. IME, players enjoy that sort of stuff way more than being handed something on rollup.

Having a character that can breathe fire because it's a racial ability that they picked on roll up is nice, but not really going to be about the character. Having a character gain the ability to breathe fire after fighting through the "tomb of doom(tm)" and picking up a strange glowing amulet which turned out to be a piece of a long dead fire god is far far far more "interesting" and "fun" for the player. And it's something that is gained by the character as part of their adventuring career that they feel they earned, and is truely "unique" due to how they obtained it.

And this is not limited to mechanical abilities either. I've had characters gain titles, reputations, power, wealth, etc along the way of adventuring. Some become well known (or notorious). Some hide in the shadows. Some become mighty wizards. Some legendary warriors. Some settle down and become innkeepers. But it's about playing the character. What you started out as? Nice for initial motivation stuff, but not really important in the long run.

1) If you consider all the possible starting locations, why choose a particularly boring and generic first as you seem to suggest ? Why not start at an interesting place from the get go even if the other interesting places are beyond the horizon for a while ?

Why assume the starting location is "boring", just because it's not unlimited? Every other place is also limited, but in different ways. Some areas may have powerful wizard guilds there. Some may have none. Some may have listA of temples/gods there, others listB, or listC. Some will be tribal. Some highly advanced civilizations. Many in between. And a lot of that is going to be based on the culture of the area. Some places will have orcs and humans living together side by side. Others, one or the other will be killed on sight. Maybe it's mountainous, and lots of mining in the area means lots of rare metals and materials are there. Other areas are flatlands, where perhaps a wider variety of intesting riding animals are availble. Another area may be forested with more medicinal herbs. Another is on the coast and has trade with other far off lands. Each location will influence what is there, the culture, weapons, magic, perhaps races, perhaps trade, etc, etc, etc.

All are "different", but all are also "limited". This makes the world feel large. As you travel you run into new areas and new things that aren't present where you came from. This doesn't make other areas more "interesting", or "powerful" or anything. Just "different". But as the players experience more of the world, the entire thing becomes broader. If you start out on day one with "everything in the game is available in your starting city" you lose the ability to have that sense of wonder as the characters find "new things" they haven't seen before. And sure, this also means that as the PCs explore more of the setting, other PC options become available, if they can rationalize them, of course. If they traveled to a far off land one time where there be lizardmen, and then came home. There aren't magically going to be lizardmen available to start in their home town now. On the other hand, if they explore deep into the mountains a few hundred miles away, and find an ancient dwarven city locked away since an ancient age, and trapped there by demons or somesuch, and in the process of an adventure, they manage to find a way to drive away the demons, seal the gate they came through, and open a route between said city and their kingdom, well... now "dwarf" become something someone could play if they wanted (and assuming it wasn't already there anyway).

See how that works? Far more "fun" for the players, and maintains longer term interest in the game.

2) You can only choose a different location if there are different locations. Which your approach of "make a starting location and maybe add something else in later when the adventurers go there" does not provide.

Again. Why would another location be "better"? And guess what? When you travel to those far off "exotic" areas, you may find that what is "normal" where you come from is actually "exotic" to the other people. It's not always about "over the next hill lies marvels". The folks over that hill will find where you come from just as marvelous.

On a recent adventure, we traveled across the sea to a subcontinent some distance away. There were lots of things there that weren't in our homelands. A whole culture who worshipped a (somewhat cruel) fire god. A strange race of toll like creatures. Powerful dragon people here and there. Weird ancient artifacts from an ancient past (before the aforementioned firegod's followers kinda stomped on things long ago). Another deity that created strange chaos construct/creatures and spewed them around occasionally for fun (and cause lots of problems). All strange and "different". Some stuff was still somewhat familiar though. One area (somewhat near the evil chaos gods area), had a group of people who worshiped a couple of the same sky/law gods that are also present in our lands. One of my characters happened to be a pretty powerful RuneLord of one of those deities (that's a very powerful kinda heroic level member of the cult), super powerful, and wielding a powerful holy anti-chaos artifact sword of her god. Basically a complete badass for her religion. Um... But she was also a centaur. A race that is common where our characters are from, but unheard of here. So, of course, these fellow cult members see this strange four legged half horse half human creature coming into their town, and think "OMG! Some hideous chaos creature. Must kill!". And yeah... hillarity ensued.

Fortunately, priests get a spell that allows them to recognize fellow members and their rank, because not much else was going to confince them that my character wasn't some sort of demon thing that needed to be destroyed. The point is that what is common in one area, may be unheard of somewhere else. Just because you travel somewhere that has things you haven't seen before doesn't also mean that things you think are normal aren't really exotic to them. And yeah. These are the kinds of settings I prefer to create. I find that they capture the imagination of the players far better than "kitchen sink world" will ever do.

1. Most RPGs don't expose this, so people don't think about it and learn how to do it.
2. A lot of RPG structures are such that your character motivations don't matter. You're playing through the adventure path, and if the adventure path doesn't care about those things, they're not gonna matter at all.

Yeah. This is why I like when players come up with motivations for "why am I a PC", but not a whole lot more. Not opposed to some reasonable backstory here, but what I don't want is the player to write up a "future history" of what they want their character story arc to be. I mean, if they do that, I'll see what I can do. But no promises at all.

Part of the problem is exactly what you just mentioned. I'm either going to have to wite the campaign around these proposed story development arcs, thus leaving very little room for anything else (remember, we may be multiplying this times X players), or I'm going to have to set that stuff aside to have the actual setting provide conflict to be resolved (adventure arc, right?). And even if I try to do the former, it's going to be pretty rare that say 5-6 players all come up with proposed arcs that happen to gel well together such that I can write a coherent set of adventures to encapsulate them all. Meaning that, someone, and probably multiple someones are getting their stuff "ignored", while others are basking in the limelinght.

It's the kind of thing you see all the time in novels, TV shows, and films, but they work because the same person who worte the setting and conflicts therein are also writing the characters and their backstories and arcs. So Luke is the son of a Jedi, and is strong with the force, because that fits into the larger story arc of "Rebels fighting against the Empire". Doesn't work well in a RPG though, because this happens:

Luke's player:"My character is the son of the smuggler king of <insert some planet here>, hidden at birth with his aunt and uncle on Tatooine, and my story arc will be me discovering my past, and deciding to follow in my fathers footsteps, finding old smugging pals of my father, and his old ship along the way, and then eventually becoming the new smuggling king myself!"

Me thinking: Um... Ok. But that's not really going to have much to do with fighting the Empire. I suppose we could wedge in some adventures where you're smuggling stuff from the Empire for the Rebellion and then contrive ways to make you a semi-hero, I guess (A Hondo type character maybe?). This will be hard...

Me: "Um... You sure you don't want to just start as a farmboy on Tatooine dreaming of getting out to the stars and having adventures and just let me fill in the stuff that happens to you along the way? Trust me. I've got a great plan for this campaign. You'll love it!"

Luke's player: "No! It's my character and I get to decide. I don't want you railroading my choices or my character arc here."

Me: <crumples up the entire Jedi/Sith concept and throw it on the floor>. Ok. Guess I'll just re-write the whole thing...

As a video game developer, there was a game called Hellgate: London. It was made by some ex-Diablo devs. It didn't do great, and there were reasons for it.

One of the most common criticisms of it was that it had no variety to the locales. However, in actuality, there were as many different tilesets as D2 had (and D2 didn't get those criticisms).

Where HG:L failed with that was that their design was such that you entered all of those tilesets very quickly, and the entire game cycled rapidly through them. Meanwhile, D2 had distinct areas, each of which had a much more limited set of tilesets available to it. But changing which ones they dealt with (along with which critters) gave a feeling of progression and change and variety even though the actual variety was the same between the two games.

IOW, people seem to view variety not based on actual variety, but on transitions. Adding more things to the general background doesn't really add variety - going from one set of things to the others does.

Yup. That was exactly what I was talking about earlier (and above in this post). Make each area "limited", but also "different". This makes the world actually feel larger to the players. May seem counter intuitive at first, but it really does work better IMO.

There was another comment that you made that I can't find, about backstory and expecting the GM to write for it. I think that's mostly just a play structure/culture of play issue - see this article: https://retiredadventurer.blogspot.c...s-of-play.html . There are some issues with that article, but it's a good starting point. (Specifically, the description of classic is pretty off, and I think that it overly-conflates storygames and narrative games, which are pretty different)

Yeah. It is highly depending on play style. And I have run campaigns where I've more or less asked the players for ideas of what they wanted to do and then built from there. It can work. I've just found from experience that it often results in a jumbled mish mash of things, kinda smooshed together in one world. Doubly so if you're actually doing this in a "new setting" (which ironically is where most people expect it). There's no existing structure for the players to kinda hang off of when building their propsals, so they can really be all over the freaking place. You're lucky if you can find two that even somewhat tie together in some way, and will often have PCs with daimetrically opposed proposed story arcs.

I do find that if I've already established the setting a bit, then I'm far more able to do this, but even then usually on a one at a time basis. A player, who is already familiar with the setting, comes to me with a character idea, complete with proposed story arc? Probably more likely to "fit in" with everything else, and also more likely to not conflict with existing PC character goals in the game. I'll still likely make some changes (because I don't want the player to know blow by blow what's going to happen), but yeah. I'll go with that. Again though, it better fit the existing setting and make sense (and not be overly disruptive, unless of course that's what the game is about).

Expecting a GM to kind of tailor the adventure to your character (but still basically write it and have you go through it) is the OC/neotrad style of game, while you're probably more of the narrative or classic style.

Yeah. A fair bit. And I get that this isn't everyone's cup of tea. And I also get that there are a lot of GMs who run this way who are absolutely horrible at it (railroads abound). But I have asked many many players to "trust me. You will enjoy what I have planned for this adventure/campaign/whatever", and have never once had a player be disappointed in the results. I also absolutely allow for on the fly player input. I have a firm rule that I will never force a major unchosen character change on a PC without the player's buy in. So mechanical things may crop up that are handed out, but nothing that is actually character changing. I do want my players to have full agency with their characters. So if I have something happen to them, and the player doesn't like the direction it's going, and they tell me this, I'll find a way to back it out, or go in another direction.

I don't tend to muck with broad character defining bits anyway. Things happen in the course of adventuring, and things may change, choices are made which can affect things, but I honestly would likely not do the Luke character I wrote as an example above. I'm just not a fan of "character discovers they have some magical past that completely drives them in a specific direction". If I were running a SW game, Luke's character would run into Obi-wan and learn about the Jedi. If his player decided Luke wanted to study the Jedi ways, then he could study and become a Jedi and only *then* might we discover that "his family is strong in the force" or something (or maybe he just gradually becomes better at it like anyone else). But it would always be a choice by the player which way they want to go. I just put the options out there in front of them.

And a lot of this stems from writing sufficiently "open" settings in the first place. And yeah, ironically, this is often a lot easier if you start out "small and simple" at first. You can go in any direction. If you spend too much time really detailing and including everything you think someone might want or need, you're more likely to write yourself into a corner.

You're right though. That's just my preferred style. And I get that some players have had bad experiences with this style. But I also think that, when done properly, it's one of the most satisfying forms of gaming for all involved. And yeah. I've never had a player complain that they felt their options were stiffled in one of my games. Never had a player quit a game I was running because they didn't like it or weren't enjoying it either. Had players leave for RL reasons, of course, but never because they weren't happy with the game.

[Satinavian]

I'm curious what you consider "interesting" then.

Now one of my current characters in a Splittermond-Campaign in the Not-China (with some differences that are not too relevant here) of the default setting for example started out as a bureaucrat two ranks below Mandarin with the job of investigating and solving ghost related problems in a major town in a remote province where the campaign started. Her abilities mostly focused on ghost related death magic, ghost related divination magic, arcane knowledge, legal knowledge, etiquette and politics and also perks regarding social status and rank.

The character was certainly not special in the setting as such. But as an adventurer ? How often do people play primary bureaucrats in a classical fantasy setting ? For me it was the first character to navigate pseudo-chinese palace policy and exploring the ghost theme in a setting where they are mostly used as helpful ancestor spirits was something newish as well.

It was a character that was all about involvement in the things that make this particular place different from other potential settings. And the same time someone that did not really fit any of the classical adventurer tropes. I never tried to make this character particularly special, but she certainly is compared to some thief with minor healing abilities and family issues or a thug with a gambling habit.

I don't want to project here, but it seems as though it's all about having some special/unique powers/abilities. And I get that. But here's the problem: If the race/class combination that gives these powers/abilities is "available where you start", then that's something that a lot of other people have too (including potentially thousands of NPCs right there in your starting area). So that's not actually "special" or "unique". If you really want the character and only that one character to have that ability/power/whatever, then that enters into a whole different area I call "wish fulfillment fantasy", that I'm not terribly interested as a GM in running.

But it is not about being unique and special in-universe. It is about feeling so to the player. Being different enough from all the other characters played or experienced as party members.

It is basically about the "been there, done that" feeling that many players feel when presented with yet another generic pseudomedieval standard setting with mostly humans and character options that regurgitate the same adventurer clichees seen for the last 30 years.

I've also found that while players (especially newer/younger players) often really want to play these kinds of things, they're often the first characters abandoned quickly once the novelty wears off. Then they want me to allow them to play something else "special". Then another. And another. Each one straining the credulity of the campaign, while adding pretty much nothing. Sorry. Been there. Done that. As Akbar says: "it's a trap!". And it's absoultely being used by the player as a crutch.

Never seen this.

I'm also not sure how "interesting character startups" make the "setting" more interesting. I'm pitching the setting, not a collection of stat blocks the players can play. Teling the players "you can play <whole bunch of interesting stuff> in this game, may appeal to the "kid in the candy store" part of all of us, but it's not going to keep the players attentions for very long. Telling them a bit about the game world, what is there, what background they know, what events are going on, and otherwise providing lots of hooks for characters to use to motivate them into being PCs in the first place, is far far more interesting.

Ideally both setting and playable characters are interesting. But if need be one could settle for one of them.

I'd rather that characters have abilities based on there actual... um... abilities. Skills, items, spells, and yes, the occassional rare special gift/ability or whatnot, obtained along the way. IME, players enjoy that sort of stuff way more than being handed something on rollup.

You are thinking about power again which is not what i was talking about.

Having a character that can breathe fire because it's a racial ability that they picked on roll up is nice, but not really going to be about the character. Having a character gain the ability to breathe fire after fighting through the "tomb of doom(tm)" and picking up a strange glowing amulet which turned out to be a piece of a long dead fire god is far far far more "interesting" and "fun" for the player. And it's something that is gained by the character as part of their adventuring career that they feel they earned, and is truely "unique" due to how they obtained it.

What is more fun is for the player to choose. But i have seen so many special abilities picked up on the way and basically disregarded/ignored because they didn't mesh well with the players ideas that i am very sceptical about them being better than something the player choose for themself at the start and as part of the character concept.

And this is not limited to mechanical abilities either. I've had characters gain titles, reputations, power, wealth, etc along the way of adventuring. Some become well known (or notorious). Some hide in the shadows. Some become mighty wizards. Some legendary warriors. Some settle down and become innkeepers. But it's about playing the character. What you started out as? Nice for initial motivation stuff, but not really important in the long run.

Sometimes that is true but i have seen many characters being about the same things their whole career until retirement.

Why assume the starting location is "boring", just because it's not unlimited? Every other place is also limited, but in different ways.

Did you notice the other words behind boring ? Generic is the most important one. If the starting location reminds the players instantly of a dozen other campaign starting locations they visited prior, it becomes very boring.

Again. Why would another location be "better"?

If the other locations have what makes the overall setting special and different from other settings, they are better.

[gbaji]

Ok. That works. Let's me know you are focused more on the profession/skills/backstory of the character than powers/abilities. Still a bit confused why you kept talking about variety of races and their abilities though. Are non-humans present in this "not China" setting you described? How much racial variety is there? Just odd that you really seemed to be focusing on this aspect of player options, and the abilities involved, but now don't mention it at all.

And yes, I get that for *you* that character is more interesting. For other players, maybe not. The examples I gave were what the players came up with themselves. They were able to play what they wanted to, and come up with their own combination of skills/profession/backstory to create that. The real issue is the degree to which a player in a given setting can create a character they want to play. And there's absolutely nothing in my setting that prevents a player from creating a character with every single attribute you just listed (specific titles/ranks perhaps different, but equivalent to be sure). The only reason my players would be unlikely to play a bureaucrat in my game isn't because it's not possible if they want, but because the reality of playing any character tied to some sort of "official position" in the area will make some forms of adventuring (basically anything with extended travel requirements outside of the actual duties of the profession) difficult. But yeah, some of my players have played characters with ranks/titles/positions within the government and that's not really a big deal.

Aside from cosmetic and label differences, I'm just not seeing much difference IMO. Certainly not enough to say that one character description is "generic and boring", while the other is "new and exciting". Eh... not so much. If that's what's interesting to you, then that's great. But again, what I described previously was what was interesting to someone else, so that's what they created instead. All about choices, right?


Also, I'm not sure how "not China" versus "not Europe" (or in the case of the setting I was actually describing "not not all of those") makes much difference. Certainly not in terms of how much actual variation players have when making their characters. If anything, the setting you just described is far more limiting than the one I was talking about. I specified no "generic" fantasy setting at all (though it is mostly high fantasy). My game setting has areas that are wild barbarian lands. Others that are more medieval. Others more "ancient/classic bronze age". Some areas are "primitives with stone axes". And yeah, an area that is a somewhat fusion-asian setting as well (I ran a "Big Trouble in <capital city name>" adventure that went over amazingly well, thank you very much). Each area having distinct differences in terms of culture, magic use/availability, technology, etc. And sure, all still limited somewhat to "sword and sorcery" types stuff (cause that's the theme), but within that range? Not a lot of restrictions. And hey. It's got magic, and potential for planar traveling, where there do exist things like modern/sci-fi settings for folks to tool around in if they want (though usually more for visiting than long term playing, since the rules system itself doesn't do modern stuff well). I literaly just recently ran them through an adventure where they found themseleves in a more or less alien controlled "star gate command" situation (with them being the "foothold situation"). In the same set of "planar travel" adventures, they also had the potential to travel to a ShadowRun world (but didn't, since the wore themselves out dealing with "war world", based on a mash up of like 3 different online MMORPG zones and was pretty brutal).

I absolutely love to put things I've run into across various books, films, TV shows, etc into my game worlds. But again, that doesn't mean that all that stuff is going to be mashed up in one place. It'll be "over there". Something else will be "in that other direction". And really "out there" stuff is usually... well, "really out there" (in terms of how to physically get form here to there). That sort of thing. And yeah, if the players want to play an entire campaign in asian-fusion land, there's nothing stopping us from doing that. And guess what? Some of the options for starting characters will be slightly different there than where they normally play. But always influenced by other factors (culture, magic use, technology, mainly). I've on multiple occasions run a set of characters in a new area from startup just to create variation.

And yeah. We want to play in a different game system? We just do that. But I guess my main point here is that you don't have to provide "kitchen sink" options to the players when starting a game to still provide plenty of variation and avoid "limited options becoming stiffling". And honestly, it sounds like you have pretty much the same viewpoint if your described setting and character is any indication. I wouldn't consider that an "out there" character concept at all, and certainly wouldn't veto it for any of the reasons I've listed previously. What I'm usually most opposed to is players who feel the need to play characters with special abilties (usually innnate racial ones), even in settings where those things maybe don't fit or make much sense. Outside of that restriction, you can play anything you want. I usually only limit things (in a fantasy setting) based on what magic stuff is available. And that's because that's often very key to the creation/culture/structure of the area itself.

[Telok]

Been working up characters in Polar Fudge Medieval Adventues, after about 12-15 characters it got stifling. 9 points spread among 6 stats capped at 3 per stat, then 3 points of 18 gifts, with two worth 3 pt and about 10-11 worth 1 pt.

Consensus among the RL gaming group is d&d 5e classes that aren't full casters are stupid limited in class/power choices past about 12th level. Also general our consensus that the in-combat choices for warrior classes are too limited to doing more & more damage because of eternal hp inflation. We're all talking about multiclassing out so that qualifies as stifling, although it's limited to post character creation. We also ended up agreeing the d&d 4e aedu power setup was too limiting and focused the game too much on combats.

Starfinder felt kind of stifling. Not in character choices or abilities, but the the way the numbers balanced it was always sort of a treadmill to keep up with the threat level. You felt it pretty strong if you were trying something outside the preapproved role of your class, like an even split dex/int caster focused on defense & control spells or a melee combat engineer (I believe they eventually added a subclass option to fix that last one). They got their numbers right. If you played to class strengths and always boosted your prime stat then basically every combat was right in the ideal time & threat zone. But if you went off archetype you started to struggle real fast.

Funny though. Year long games of Classic Traveller, Champions, AD&D, D&D 3.x, Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e, never got any of that sort of talk. And three of those have way fewer character build options than the current couple market leaders.

[icefractal]

Funny though. Year long games of Classic Traveller, Champions, AD&D, D&D 3.x, Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e, never got any of that sort of talk. And three of those have way fewer character build options than the current couple market leaders.

What market leaders are you talking about? 5E?

Because I haven't played enough Traveller/AD&D/DtD40k7e to accurately compare them, but I'd say that 3.x and Champions both have a greater amount of build options than WotC-published 5E. If you bring in 3PP then that's a lot more options for 5E, but equally more for 3x.

[Witty Username]

As a player,
Sell me on a vibe and I am good with just about anything.

As a DM,
Do I have means to set up problems with more than one solution. Take combat, if combat is the only solution, I lose interest in the system, if combat is framed as a possible solution, with evasion and negotiation, I have something to hang my stuff on. If it has the point that I can set up a situation, and the players can apply a solution of their preference without me having to fight the system to get it going, I am happy. If I start having to hack at it to invent and rework systems, It depends on how much hacking. D&D is frustrating (no guidance, nearly at all) but it has universal mechanics like ability checks to use as starting points to put together things, after one gets the hang of it what DCs work best for the table become apparent (I like DC 11), and multiple specializations are possible, if a bit janky.

[Telok]

What market leaders are you talking about? 5E?

Because I haven't played enough Traveller/AD&D/DtD40k7e to accurately compare them,

The last two d&ds, yeah, but also the pazio games.

Classic Traveller, assuming you aren't doing something like an all merc game or all space navy game and thus using those specific char gen sets, has about 12-18 'services' to pick a career in. But chargen is random dice all the way. Sure, there's modifiers for some high stats here and there, but you have to roll to even get into your chosen service and you get a random one if you fail the roll. While random char gen isn't to everyone's taste, we did and nobody in our group ever talked about feeling limited in options. Likewise character advancement is practically non-existant, but still no complaints.

Same group of people, six months into d&d 4e, and six months into d&d 5e, and... I think maybe three or four months into Starfinder... These same people talk at the table about feeling like there's a lack of options. Not so much in character building (and like I said the complaints on that for d&d 5e only started post 12th level or trying unapproved builds in starfinder), but in the actions they can take and the stuff their characters can do.

Which is weird when you start thinking about it. Because it should look like "anything normal humans can do plus...", with Traveller being "whatever off the shelf civilian tech gadgets they can afford to buy 1500 years in the future while still paying their mortgage" and the d&ds/d&d-likes being "plus these cool powers from class, plus magic, plus being able to face tank an elephant falling a thousand feet onto you, plus etc., etc.". But the people in my group don't feel that. The GM feels constrained by d&ds/d&d-likes reliance on combat resource draining and ever inflating hp & damage numbers. The players feel constrained by things like the fights per day routine or the difference between attended items and mounts & followers that auto-die in the first fireball of the day.

So I can't say what, exactly, it is. But it isn't, for the gamers I know in real life, about the exact number of character build options, or the number of spells, or anything you can count (well except maybe those d&d 5e post 12th level things). It's more something attached to the way the rules present versus what they promote & punish during game play.

[Satinavian]

Ok. That works. Let's me know you are focused more on the profession/skills/backstory of the character than powers/abilities. Still a bit confused why you kept talking about variety of races and their abilities though. Are non-humans present in this "not China" setting you described? How much racial variety is there? Just odd that you really seemed to be focusing on this aspect of player options, and the abilities involved, but now don't mention it at all.

Splittermond only has rule support for 5 different races (human, elf, dwarf, gnome, varg) and thus it doesn't really make much sense to talk about race choice in terms of normal/exotic in this system. All the build flexibility comes from skills, masteries, spells, perks and ressources.

In this particular case the character was a gnome, while gnomes make up 20% of the official settings not-China, which is around half as common as humans.
And yes, "not China" specifically. Not fusion Asia. Splittermonds official setting has around 8 other major regions that draw most of their inspiration from corresponding different parts of Asia and are all very distinct from each other. But there is always at least one major twist, they never are 1:1 copies.

And sure, other players find other characters more interesting. But you asked about what i consider interesting and i answered. Now to talk again about where i think this character differs from your two examples in meaningfull ways.

1) Your first character is a thief. Which is a standard adventurer class/archetype in fantasy RPGs since over 40 years. With minor healing abilities. With healing being a standard party role for as long. Your other character is a big tough soldier and him working as thug for local crime hardly changes the archetype. That is pretty much the classical fighting man from yore.

They both might have been fun to play and such a success. But both wield the same abilities as their primary shticks that we have all seen hundreds of times. Where we know pretty much exactly what they can be expected to do and how they fit in a standard party composition. And it is extremely likely that both will tackle problems along the old well established best practices known to everyone.

So far the mechanical side

2) Both have literally nothing to their background or motivation that is really setting and campaign specific. Ok, maybe have a god who likes/stands for fertility which is still kinda common. I even could them put into Splittermonds not-China and it would work.
My character however is deeply tied to the elements particular to this setting. Being a bureaucrat in a pseudochinese imperial bureaucracy complete with examinations etc. won't work anywhere that is not also some not-China. Nor does this heavy focus on things that are closely linked to the specific cultural treatment of ghost and all the traditions surrounding them.
Basically all the major points of the character are deeply intertwined with setting specifics. And those setting specifics including unique abilities/perks are part of the game from day one, not maybe sometimes later after introduced in an adventure.

And yes. That character is not made to left behind her home and venture somewhere else to have her adventurer career there. (It still happened occasionally but, well). Her home, her relations she started the game with, her job ... all of that remained important in some way the whole campaign. And that is what i think a proper starting setting to actually play with should provide. Not just a hub to drop the first adventure hooks and be irrelevant thereafter with characters being blank slates that form all their important characteristics and connections later and elsewhere.

Now there is a subgenre, where i do favor pretty blank slate characters with only minor ties back : The expedition/exploration one. Here the home of the characters and what they have been there is playing only a minor role by design. But that is rare, not the default.


And again, i never argued for kitchen sink. Don't particularly like that one.

[Pex]

The last two d&ds, yeah, but also the pazio games.

Classic Traveller, assuming you aren't doing something like an all merc game or all space navy game and thus using those specific char gen sets, has about 12-18 'services' to pick a career in. But chargen is random dice all the way. Sure, there's modifiers for some high stats here and there, but you have to roll to even get into your chosen service and you get a random one if you fail the roll. While random char gen isn't to everyone's taste, we did and nobody in our group ever talked about feeling limited in options. Likewise character advancement is practically non-existant, but still no complaints.

Same group of people, six months into d&d 4e, and six months into d&d 5e, and... I think maybe three or four months into Starfinder... These same people talk at the table about feeling like there's a lack of options. Not so much in character building (and like I said the complaints on that for d&d 5e only started post 12th level or trying unapproved builds in starfinder), but in the actions they can take and the stuff their characters can do.

Which is weird when you start thinking about it. Because it should look like "anything normal humans can do plus...", with Traveller being "whatever off the shelf civilian tech gadgets they can afford to buy 1500 years in the future while still paying their mortgage" and the d&ds/d&d-likes being "plus these cool powers from class, plus magic, plus being able to face tank an elephant falling a thousand feet onto you, plus etc., etc.". But the people in my group don't feel that. The GM feels constrained by d&ds/d&d-likes reliance on combat resource draining and ever inflating hp & damage numbers. The players feel constrained by things like the fights per day routine or the difference between attended items and mounts & followers that auto-die in the first fireball of the day.

So I can't say what, exactly, it is. But it isn't, for the gamers I know in real life, about the exact number of character build options, or the number of spells, or anything you can count (well except maybe those d&d 5e post 12th level things). It's more something attached to the way the rules present versus what they promote & punish during game play.

Sounds to me your fellow players want to improv everything. I won't go far as to say they want no rules at all. They're fine with rules providing for the math mechanics to avoid "I shot you" "No you didn't" playground arguments, but after that they want to do whatever they want whenever they want however they want and no words on paper can tell them no. Say what you want to do, roll dice to determine success or failure, deal with the consequence and repeat. I'm doubtful any game system will satisfy them. Every game has restrictions. Some more than others, but they exist.

[Zuras]

The last two d&ds, yeah, but also the pazio games.

Classic Traveller, assuming you aren't doing something like an all merc game or all space navy game and thus using those specific char gen sets, has about 12-18 'services' to pick a career in. But chargen is random dice all the way. Sure, there's modifiers for some high stats here and there, but you have to roll to even get into your chosen service and you get a random one if you fail the roll. While random char gen isn't to everyone's taste, we did and nobody in our group ever talked about feeling limited in options. Likewise character advancement is practically non-existant, but still no complaints.

Same group of people, six months into d&d 4e, and six months into d&d 5e, and... I think maybe three or four months into Starfinder... These same people talk at the table about feeling like there's a lack of options. Not so much in character building (and like I said the complaints on that for d&d 5e only started post 12th level or trying unapproved builds in starfinder), but in the actions they can take and the stuff their characters can do.

Which is weird when you start thinking about it. Because it should look like "anything normal humans can do plus...", with Traveller being "whatever off the shelf civilian tech gadgets they can afford to buy 1500 years in the future while still paying their mortgage" and the d&ds/d&d-likes being "plus these cool powers from class, plus magic, plus being able to face tank an elephant falling a thousand feet onto you, plus etc., etc.". But the people in my group don't feel that. The GM feels constrained by d&ds/d&d-likes reliance on combat resource draining and ever inflating hp & damage numbers. The players feel constrained by things like the fights per day routine or the difference between attended items and mounts & followers that auto-die in the first fireball of the day.

So I can't say what, exactly, it is. But it isn't, for the gamers I know in real life, about the exact number of character build options, or the number of spells, or anything you can count (well except maybe those d&d 5e post 12th level things). It's more something attached to the way the rules present versus what they promote & punish during game play.

The interaction of expectations and game system is obviously the driver here, but it’s all tied up with the psychology of gaming and doesn’t make much logical sense.

I think some of this is related to something like the uncanny valley effect. Most people will prefer a color film to a black and white one, but would strongly prefer the black and white version of a film to a badly colorized one.

I wouldn’t say it’s about what the rules promote and punish, it’s more about how you go about the problem solving side of the game, and whether the options you chose feel like they produce meaningfully different results.

Experience-wise, two clerics of different gods could have identical stats and abilities but approach problems very differently, while two DPR optimized fighters could play almost identically despite pursuing completely divergent paths to achieve their maximized DPR.

I’m not sure there’s any typical point a lack of options becomes frustrating, but my experience in 5e is that the players who value lots of options most tend to want to play the same class, or at least party role, over and over again, and like the small variations that keep things mostly the same while changing a bit of the flair. I have a player at my table who loves 5e’s subclass setup, which let him play slightly different versions of the same fighter over and over again.

[awa]

My character however is deeply tied to the elements particular to this setting.

I think this is an important aspect for me as well, when I think about what I would play in a standard d&d setting I often go weird, I feel little inspiration to be a generic race/class from Water Deep it’s kind of boring and generic. When I'm reading about L5R I don’t have that same instinct, there are enough different clans and things within it that I'm inspired to make a samurai. (Note have never actually played and don’t know how but that's less important than the fact that I want to make a character from certain clans.)

If the setting is interesting and novel just being part of it is interesting and novel, if the setting is not interesting then I at least am more likely to find a weird character to create my own novelty.

So, a more refined setting is often (but not always) a more limited one and in that case, limits can improve novelty. L5r would not be improved by one player demanding to play a dragon born wizard.

[PhoenixPhyre]

So, a more refined setting is often (but not always) a more limited one and in that case, limits can improve novelty. L5r would not be improved by one player demanding to play a dragon born wizard.

Strong agree here. The setting should be interesting. Playing something exotic relative to a boring setting is, to me, a very hollow form of novelty. Because in a boring, generic setting, especially one where "anything goes", being exotic is...normal. If everyone's weird, no one is. And if no one cares that you're weird/exotic in-setting, then are you really weird/exotic?

I also strongly agree that having characters that are tightly bound to the setting in backstory and beyond is (a) key to having engaging games for me.

[Mechalich]

Strong agree here. The setting should be interesting. Playing something exotic relative to a boring setting is, to me, a very hollow form of novelty. Because in a boring, generic setting, especially one where "anything goes", being exotic is...normal. If everyone's weird, no one is. And if no one cares that you're weird/exotic in-setting, then are you really weird/exotic?

I also strongly agree that having characters that are tightly bound to the setting in backstory and beyond is (a) key to having engaging games for me.

This is heavily dependent upon both the setting in question, the attitudes of the players, and the type of campaign being run.

First, the setting has to meet a certain verisimilitude bar in order for in depth interaction with the setting to even be possible. Otherwise, any player attempting to put hooks into the setting will either bounce off of it or crash through it like it's made of cardboard. Second, the players have to be willing to expend the time, effort, and intellectual capital to care about the setting. Many in-depth settings are extremely involved and are either impenetrable many players because they don't interface effectively with the ideas - ex. something like Eclipse Phase, which involves wrapping the brain around some highly speculative concepts - or require more reading than the players are willing to put forth - ex. something like Exalted, which involves reading hundreds of pages of backstory to properly comprehend. Third, the campaign in question has to interact with the setting in at least a quasi-open world fashion, rather than being a largely on rails adventure path or something similar.

A lot of the time some or all of these points will not hold. Many players, anticipating this, want weird/exotic options so that they can either look cool or be bad***, because they don't expect anything more in-depth to even appear.

[gbaji]

Starfinder felt kind of stifling. Not in character choices or abilities, but the the way the numbers balanced it was always sort of a treadmill to keep up with the threat level. You felt it pretty strong if you were trying something outside the preapproved role of your class, like an even split dex/int caster focused on defense & control spells or a melee combat engineer (I believe they eventually added a subclass option to fix that last one). They got their numbers right. If you played to class strengths and always boosted your prime stat then basically every combat was right in the ideal time & threat zone. But if you went off archetype you started to struggle real fast.

Funny though. Year long games of Classic Traveller, Champions, AD&D, D&D 3.x, Dungeons the Dragoning 40k 7e, never got any of that sort of talk. And three of those have way fewer character build options than the current couple market leaders.

Yeah. I think that's a potential problem of any game system with tools to "help the GM balance encounters", that depend on some sort of level or "total points" type calculation to do so. The players may feel that if they don't actually optimize their gains over time to "things that help win encounters", then they may feel they are falling behind in any such "balanced encounters" going forward.

There are ways to adjust for this, but they are very very system specific. And often require both player and GM buy in to break out of the "balanced encounters per day" dynamic as the primary "adventure balance" mechanism. Which I've also found very tough to do.

And yes, "not China" specifically. Not fusion Asia. Splittermonds official setting has around 8 other major regions that draw most of their inspiration from corresponding different parts of Asia and are all very distinct from each other. But there is always at least one major twist, they never are 1:1 copies.

Oh. But it sounds like you are agreeing with my earlier suggestion to have starting areas specific to "what is there", and that this is acceptable. What you are descrbing is even more restrictive than what I was talking about. So a starting area that is "not medevial Europe", but with another area that is "not classic greece", and another that is "not Roman empire", and another that is "not fuedal Japan", and another that is "not Chin dynasty China", and another that is "not anicent Eyypt", and another that is "not Tolkien elven forest", and another that is "not orc tribes", and another that is "not Conan barbarians", and another that is "game system specific Trolls", and another that is "game system specific dwarves", and another where we dropped Harn in there, and another where we decided that the old Judge guild Haven setting worked, and yet another with the Ranken Empire and Sanctuary works, that setting is "stiffling"? But one where there are your choice of 8 asian themed areas is perfetly open and free and will provide for superior character options for the players?

Not getting that at all. Again, at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with having one area of a larger world be limited in terms of "what is there" and thus "what you can play starting out there". And this says nothing at all about how big the full setting is. And absolutely says nothing about how limited options are or whether this results in the players feeling "stiffled".

And sure, other players find other characters more interesting. But you asked about what i consider interesting and i answered. Now to talk again about where i think this character differs from your two examples in meaningfull ways.

1) Your first character is a thief. Which is a standard adventurer class/archetype in fantasy RPGs since over 40 years. With minor healing abilities. With healing being a standard party role for as long. Your other character is a big tough soldier and him working as thug for local crime hardly changes the archetype. That is pretty much the classical fighting man from yore.

You are working really really hard to force classic "clases" into a pair of descriptions that don't include them at all. Um... At the end of the day, in a fantasy setting, there's kinda two things: Physical stuff and Magical stuff. And within those, there's different types of physical stuff you can do, and differnet kinds of magical stuff you can do. You're free to declare anyone who has some thiefly skills to be a "thief", or anyone who can fight a "fighter", but that's simply not true. You're assuming it is, despite me telling you repeatedly that in this game system and this game setting, that is not the case.

They both might have been fun to play and such a success. But both wield the same abilities as their primary shticks that we have all seen hundreds of times. Where we know pretty much exactly what they can be expected to do and how they fit in a standard party composition. And it is extremely likely that both will tackle problems along the old well established best practices known to everyone.

Really? Ok. You kinda glossed over the key bits I mentioned for both characters in your rush to declare them "boring". Performing and Gambling. In this game system, what magic you use is a major component to your character. And depending on what kind you select, which deity you worship affects what kinds of special spells (and some abilities) you may obtain. The character you dismissed as a bog standard thief, was picked up and trained by a master of the theatre, who is a priest of the theatre deity. They use magic to influece audience members to enjoy the performances, and illusions to enhance them. That's what her character is learning to do. The whole healer/thief stuff is her backstory. That's it. It explains who she is, where she came from, what motivates here, etc.

The soldier with the gambling habit is also different. Sure. He's a big tough guy, so when he hangs out with thiefly types, he fills a role that makes sennse for him. But again, he actually worships a deity of chance. Well, there are two such deities. One of which uses luck magically. The other does not, but bends fate to achieve desired outcomes (which is who he worsihps). They're good at gambling because they adjust the odds in their favor. They get magic that allows for divining the "correct" course of action when making choices, and in combat can gain some limited precognitive abilities as well. He's actually a somewhat mediocre warrior, but uses these to his advantage (kinda lurks around waiting for just the right time to strike and then takes folks out). He folds like a cheap suit the moment he's faced with an actual highly skilled and powerful fighter type. He once spent almost an entire combat once trying to take out a priest of a war god with his precog magic up basically going "Nope, going to die. retreat. Nope. going to die this round. Retreat. Yup. He's going to paste me this round as well. retreat".

These are extremely "different" than bog standard character tropes. Certainly more unique and different than "shaman who focuses on ghostbusting and works as a paper pusher by day".

2) Both have literally nothing to their background or motivation that is really setting and campaign specific. Ok, maybe have a god who likes/stands for fertility which is still kinda common. I even could them put into Splittermonds not-China and it would work.

Er. Except for the parts where you focused on what they did on the side or in the past, and ignored what they actually chose to do.

And it's weird because it appears like you started out arguing against restricting characters to "things that fit in the campaign", but now are criticizing for chracters "not being campaign specific". Which is it?

My character however is deeply tied to the elements particular to this setting. Being a bureaucrat in a pseudochinese imperial bureaucracy complete with examinations etc. won't work anywhere that is not also some not-China. Nor does this heavy focus on things that are closely linked to the specific cultural treatment of ghost and all the traditions surrounding them.

Huh? Other than the label of "not-china", I'm not seeing it. You can be a bureaucrat anywhere. Every place has them, right? So the only thing left is that you deal with spirits, and specifically ghosts. Um... That's like a narrow subset of a whole form of magic available in the game I'm talking about. I could make a dozen variations of that exact character in the game I'm running right now. Nothing you described is "unique" at all.

Doesn't mean it's not "interesting", but it just seems like you are really judging these things with a massive bias here.

Basically all the major points of the character are deeply intertwined with setting specifics. And those setting specifics including unique abilities/perks are part of the game from day one, not maybe sometimes later after introduced in an adventure.

Well sure. The specifics of what papers you are pushing will be setting specific. And the specifics of the types of ghosts are as well. But that's the same in any game. The names of the spells/abilities/whatever that are used change is all.

I never said that the starting setting contained no abilities/spells/whatever. Just that these things were specific to "what is there". In this game system, that generally means which deities or other forms of magic are available in this area, will determine what are... well... available.

Presumably, in the game you are describing, as the game continues, you will expand things to include the other 7 regions, right? And those regions may also have different structures, abilities, etc, right? I'm not seeing the difference. Unless they don't? Then what's the point of having "not-china" and "not-japan", and "not-korea", and "not-thailand", if they are all functionally identical? I'm assuming they are not. Which is all I was talking about in my initial posts.

And yes. That character is not made to left behind her home and venture somewhere else to have her adventurer career there. (It still happened occasionally but, well). Her home, her relations she started the game with, her job ... all of that remained important in some way the whole campaign. And that is what i think a proper starting setting to actually play with should provide. Not just a hub to drop the first adventure hooks and be irrelevant thereafter with characters being blank slates that form all their important characteristics and connections later and elsewhere.

And again. I never said this. Not once. This is the second time you have suggested that I drop new characters off in one area, with limited character options, and then immediately send them off elsewhere to adventure. And I will state again that this is not remotely what I'm talking about. They start in one specific area. Gotta physically be "somewhere", right? That area will define what they start out with. They will play almost exclusively in that area. However, some advenntures may take them to other parts of the world, which will be "different" than the area they start in. Different cultures. Different resources. Different gods worshiped and magic used. But they will, in all likelihood, return home when their travels are over.

Those other areas, however, still continue to exist in the game setting. And, if at some future point the Players come to me and say "we'd like to run some characters in <some other part of the setting>", we can. They start new characters in that area. And they get to experience that area from the point of view of natives rather than traveling adventurers on their way through while on some quest or something. They don't just transplant their existing characters. I mean, they could if they want to, but generally that's not how this works in my setting.

I think you're also missing that I don't require players run one and only one character in the setting, and then run them through a stock set of adventures. The play a chacter. Then they create and play another (or may play the same one if they want). Over time, they may have 8 or 10 different semi-active characters availabe to run on any given adventure that comes along. They get to pick (usually, sometimes I have specific scenarios involving specific characters). It gives us the advantage of running a variety of different power level and scope adventures in the same setting. And yes, this means that some chracters will have never left the local area, while others have spanned across the world on adventures. Some of this is about descrbing things the players experience, but some others are about what each individual character has experienced in the setting. Those are not the same thing. But if we're talking about building a game setting for the players to play in, it's relevant to make this distinction. The players learn about the setting over time, and their characters play in the setting as well.

Which I feel makes a setting feel both "large" *and* allows for a massive amount of variation over time. But yeah. On day one, first adventure? I'm going to start small. I don't want to have to define "everything that exists in this entire setting" on day one. Because, odds are, that's actually going to limit my game setting over time. So yeah, this means that character options are going to be limited to what I've decided is in the starting area on day one. It also means that I can expand the game setting over time to include diferent things, but to make sure that they fit and aren't going to unbalance the entire game in some way. Bowing to pressure from players to include some race/class/abilities/whatever in a setting where you didn't take it into consideration already may be harmless, but sometimes it'll result in problems down the line that you simply cannot anticpate in the moment. And again, if you allow "anything the game system can allow" into your game setting, then you have no real room for expansion. You can't have "there be dragons" on your map, if dragons are right here already, right?

That's all I'm saying.

[Telok]

I wouldn’t say it’s about what the rules promote and punish, it’s more about how you go about the problem solving side of the game, and whether the options you chose feel like they produce meaningfully different results.

Maybe. I'm loathe to try psychoanalysing other people based on casual observation, much less on second hand reports and personal assumption biases. But that might be close.

Lets try it. Trav...

Eh, maybe, maybe not. I'm not interested enough, nor have the time now to dive into it. There's just something... Nah. Times up, gotta go.

[Satinavian]

Not getting that at all. Again, at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with having one area of a larger world be limited in terms of "what is there" and thus "what you can play starting out there". And this says nothing at all about how big the full setting is. And absolutely says nothing about how limited options are or whether this results in the players feeling "stiffled".

Again, i am not against that and never was.

IF you reread my point it was always "If you do that choose a region with stuff that catches the players' interest". As long as that is done, the limitation works. If not, it doesn't.

These are extremely "different" than bog standard character tropes.

This description of them is really different. Especially for the gambling thug who suddenly is a fighter with precognition and fate altering magic. Which certainly is not the same as gambling.

And it's weird because it appears like you started out arguing against restricting characters to "things that fit in the campaign", but now are criticizing for chracters "not being campaign specific". Which is it?

Reread my posts again.

I never argued against "restricting characters to things that fit the campaign". I warned against designing a campaign in a way that the character space that would fit in it is so small that none of the options interest the players.

I never said that the starting setting contained no abilities/spells/whatever. Just that these things were specific to "what is there". In this game system, that generally means which deities or other forms of magic are available in this area, will determine what are... well... available.

You made the impression that special abilities/spells/whatever etc were something that starting characters should not have and only aquire during adventuring. Which to me means that even the things that make the starting region special are things that PC should not have had any involvement before the game starts. And i argued the exact opposite : Starting characters should be deeply involved in whatever makes the starting area special.

Presumably, in the game you are describing, as the game continues, you will expand things to include the other 7 regions, right?

This campaign is nearing the end after over 100 sessions. We visited 3 of those regions for a total of ~10 sessions so far.

The game never expanded to include them and won't do. They are mostly just there like in the beginning. In the background. Adding color mostly, popping up in conversation now and then and have a role in geopolitics, regular politics, history and trade. From session one. As i said, we use the official setting of the game system.

I don't like the slowly expanding of the world. People generally have an idea what is beyond the horizon, expecially nobles, merchants, scholars. There are always ties and connections, always influence. And of course history.

I think you're also missing that I don't require players run one and only one character in the setting, and then run them through a stock set of adventures. The play a chacter. Then they create and play another (or may play the same one if they want). Over time, they may have 8 or 10 different semi-active characters availabe to run on any given adventure that comes along. They get to pick (usually, sometimes I have specific scenarios involving specific characters). It gives us the advantage of running a variety of different power level and scope adventures in the same setting. And yes, this means that some chracters will have never left the local area, while others have spanned across the world on adventures. Some of this is about descrbing things the players experience, but some others are about what each individual character has experienced in the setting. Those are not the same thing. But if we're talking about building a game setting for the players to play in, it's relevant to make this distinction. The players learn about the setting over time, and their characters play in the setting as well.

Sure.

And that way is extremely common in groups that use official settings. They also tend to run differnt groups in them etc. The difference is the last part "players learning about the setting over time" and the character variety going up in acordance with that. That is not to my taste.

[Zuras]

Sounds to me your fellow players want to improv everything. I won't go far as to say they want no rules at all. They're fine with rules providing for the math mechanics to avoid "I shot you" "No you didn't" playground arguments, but after that they want to do whatever they want whenever they want however they want and no words on paper can tell them no. Say what you want to do, roll dice to determine success or failure, deal with the consequence and repeat. I'm doubtful any game system will satisfy them. Every game has restrictions. Some more than others, but they exist.

Games can have heavily improvisational and narrative components and still include concrete boundaries on player actions. Fate and Whitehack in particular provide tremendous flexibility and don’t devolve into a quantum fog of rules when the GM has to say no to something.

Maybe. I'm loathe to try psychoanalysing other people based on casual observation, much less on second hand reports and personal assumption biases. But that might be close.

Lets try it. Trav...

Eh, maybe, maybe not. I'm not interested enough, nor have the time now to dive into it. There's just something... Nah. Times up, gotta go.

It’s hardly psychoanalysis to note that people’s preferences aren’t the least bit rational, and people have markedly different reactions to mathematically identical situations depending on how they’re presented (studies show we dislike losing more than we like winning, for example).

I think the whole premise of the original question is very specific to a particular D&D 3e+ style of game, as well, where you choose your class at character creation and are effectively locked into your character archetype by 3rd level or so. Locking your character into an archetype before they’ve even experienced a tenth of their heroic journey also seems pretty stifling to a player who wants their character to grow with the story without becoming mechanically disadvantaged.

[Tanarii]

Games can have heavily improvisational and narrative components and still include concrete boundaries on player actions. Fate and Whitehack in particular provide tremendous flexibility and don’t devolve into a quantum fog of rules when the GM has to say no to something.

Plenty of folks seem to consider GM saying no to something not a valid "solution" to a written rule. Even if it's the written rule.

Ditto for GM fiat decision making in more general terms.

[Zuras]

Plenty of folks seem to consider GM saying no to something not a valid "solution" to a written rule. Even if it's the written rule.

Ditto for GM fiat decision making in more general terms.

Calling it “GM fiat” instead of “referee judgment call” or “GM-Player negotiation” kinda gives the game away.

[Tanarii]

Calling it “GM fiat” instead of “referee judgment call” or “GM-Player negotiation” kinda gives the game away.

Yes the favorable ness, neutral ness, or negative ness of the term does give good insight into how it's being viewed.

[Zuras]

Yes the favorable ness, neutral ness, or negative ness of the term does give good insight into how it's being viewed.

DM Fiat was actually much more respected prior to 2015, as it was identical to DM Ferrari. Since they parted ways, however, DM Fiat has been viewed in an increasingly negative light.

I have no issue with people who find narrative games in the Fate or PbtA style don’t work for them, but to say they don’t have rules or structure is just flatly false. Even Improv has rules—I have multiple books of improv games that help a lot to get people started with “making it up as you go along”.

[gbaji]

IF you reread my point it was always "If you do that choose a region with stuff that catches the players' interest". As long as that is done, the limitation works. If not, it doesn't.

Fair enough. It sounded from your earlier posts that you were arguing that any such limited starting location and options would not catch the players interest at all. I think a lot of this is based on very different approaches to settings in general though.

This description of them is really different. Especially for the gambling thug who suddenly is a fighter with precognition and fate altering magic. Which certainly is not the same as gambling.

Because I was describing the backstory, not the mechanical choices that backstory lead to. The mechanics were defined on the character sheet. Which were actually very minimal. Again, this is a game system where characters tend to start out with some skill choice variation, and probably some magic path they are setting out on (with somewhat minimal magic available). But that magic choice/path presents a lot of variation. In this case, a cult of gamblers who woship a deity of fate who grants some minor abilities to see and alter fate itself. Other's may worship deities of combat who offer spells that significantly improve combat stuff. Or deities of healing, or knowledge, or illusion, or luck, or hunting, or various elemental powers, or.... <huge list of things>.

I was trying to highlight that even with an identical mechanical choice, the actual PC backstory can vary quite a bit. Why a character chooses to follow a specific path is as important to how the character plays out as what path they chose. Not every "soldier who worships <war god>" is identical. And not every "risktaker" who worships a goddess of fate is identical. And not every "performer who worships the god of illusions" is identical. It's not all about the equivalent of "race/class" combos. Or at least, it should not be all about that.

I never argued against "restricting characters to things that fit the campaign". I warned against designing a campaign in a way that the character space that would fit in it is so small that none of the options interest the players.

I think you and I may disagree on what constitutes "so small". I view broad mechanical options as less important than broad character personality and motivation options. I also tend to think that you can fit in a heck of a lot of variation in a relatively small space if you make that space dynamic and "real". And I happen to also think that the players will feel more intune with a space that "makes sense" than one that includes a ton of different mechanical options for no reason other than "the GM didn't want to limit PC choices".

So yeah, I guess I'm cautioning in the opposite direction. Most of the time, limits on "what is there" make sense. Geographical regions tend to have something that ties the people who live there together. It can be a common culture, beliefs, whatever. I feel that it's extremely important to make that starting area (especially for a new campaign in a new setting) feel "real" to the players. They need to feel like this place they are living in has some sort of flavor to it. And yeah, a lot of time that's going to preclude the "kitchen sink" sort of options. It means saying "here are the 3 or 4 racial groups present in the area", and "here are the different professions", and "here are the various magic paths available to you", and then letting the players select from those in various combinations to create their characters.

And yeah, this does mean that as a GM you need to resist the urge to let a player who says "I really want to play <race that isn't there> and <class that doesn't fit the region> who worships <deity that doesn't fit either>". You will damage the "feel" of that location if you do that.

You made the impression that special abilities/spells/whatever etc were something that starting characters should not have and only aquire during adventuring. Which to me means that even the things that make the starting region special are things that PC should not have had any involvement before the game starts. And i argued the exact opposite : Starting characters should be deeply involved in whatever makes the starting area special.

I'm not sure how you got that impression. Quite the opposite. The whole gamut of abilities/spells/whatever are available, but based on "what is actually there". In most games, this is going to be based on the race/class/guild/religion/whatever options, and those I do limit to "what is there". So yeah, you may pick from X races, cause that's what's there. And you may pick from Y classes (including whatever magic they grant), because that's what's there. Same with other options.

Whatever magical abilities, spells, whatever that would be granted by the selection of choices in an area are available on start up. My issue is players who want to find something that isn't in the area and play that instead. In some game systems, this involves digging through sourcebooks and finding some oddball race/class combo and wanting to play that instead of the choices I've determined are present. That's all I was talking about. At no point was I suggesting that you could be a cleric of <deity> but not get any spells. Or that you could be an elf or dwarf, but get none of the natural racial abilities of those. Or you can play a wizard, but have an empty spellbook or something. Nope. You start as a wizard, but I've determined what options there are (maybe an official guild, and a handful of independent masters who maybe take on apprentices for training, each of which has maybe some structures as to what spells/schools they teach young wizards and thus what spells you may have access to initially depending on that choice).

But you always get "something". But that "something" is the stuff that is available based on class/race/whatever choices in the area on startup. Yes, over time additional "things" will be discovered. Could be additiional magical choices, or skill/class choices, or just strange magic objects, rare magical abilities granted, etc.

The game never expanded to include them and won't do. They are mostly just there like in the beginning. In the background. Adding color mostly, popping up in conversation now and then and have a role in geopolitics, regular politics, history and trade. From session one. As i said, we use the official setting of the game system.

I don't like the slowly expanding of the world. People generally have an idea what is beyond the horizon, expecially nobles, merchants, scholars. There are always ties and connections, always influence. And of course history.

Ok. But I'm not sure if "your horizon is limited at first, but expands as you learn more about the world, and even physically explore it" is going to be more limited/stiffling than "theres's this whole huge world out there that I will describe in detail, but you're never going to actually experience it at any point during play".

And that way is extremely common in groups that use official settings. They also tend to run differnt groups in them etc. The difference is the last part "players learning about the setting over time" and the character variety going up in acordance with that. That is not to my taste.

Sounds like just a difference in tastes. You are running a game in an official setting. I tend to avoid them like the plague. And yes, in an official setting it's easy to pull out the sourcebook and describe all the things that someone else wrote about "other places" that exist in the setting.

I was specifically speaking of creating your own setting. And when you do that, you start out small and then build. But the beauty is that instead of the players "reading about it", they get to actually experience it. And it has the advantage that they can't learn what is "over there" by going out and reading a sourcebook.

IME this massively increases player interest in a setting. They want to explore it. And as a GM, you can tailor different parts of the setting to what sorts of adventures you and the players want to play in. You aren't limited to what someone else wrote. And yeah, as a side bonus (and perhaps most relevant to this thread), you don't have players coming up to you and asking to play "this race/class/whatever from some other part of the setting". They literally don't know that there's some other race over there until they go there. They don't know about the fire worshipers in <some other land> until they encounter them in game. It's not just an adventure for the characters, but also for the players.

And yeah, I much much prefer running those kinds of games. It does require a lot more creativity, but IMO the benefits far outweigh those costs. And don't get me wrong, I've played a lot of games in various published settings. But honestly, usually restrict myself to a single campaign or set of adventures. I just don't find running games in someone else's sandbox all that interesting. It's very constraining. At the very least, I will modify the heck out of any stock setting that I read. Taking elemnents of it. Heck, I usually take elements from a lot of settings, make changes, modify to fit a different setting (and sometimes whole different game systems), and go from there. Which gives the players the occasional "hey, isn't this like <whatever> from <some setting>?". Yup. It is. But it's also kinda not.

[Telok]

One limited option that's pretty stifling is game systems. Every couple years I'll run a 9-12 month campaign in a different system. But for the last 20 years as a player I haven't gotten to do anything but yet another damn version of D&D. Nobody around this town can get out of the rut of running yet another damn generic kitchen sink fantasy knockoff D&D game to save yet another world of generic mud farmers and generic snotty nobles from yet another generic world ending threat, except me.

That's stifling.