charcreation - Majordomus/system-design GitHub Wiki

Design Principles for Character Generation

(from the blog mythcreants.com 2018-06-16)

1. Collaborative character creation, as part of the first gaming session. Relationships between characters are established as part of the character generation. Avoid "playing alone together".

2. Minimize the need for arithmetic during character creation (or indeed during play).

3. Meaningful choices - a balance between a limited number of preset classes on the one hand, and total freedom on the other.

4. Clear and concise information - no long lists of mostly similar skills/feats/attibutes that takes hours of leafing through in order to make an optimized character. Ideally, all the information needed to make a character should be present on the character sheet itself.

5. Consistency between character background and character mechanics. The background should directly give rise to attributes, or at the very least be logically consistent. No illiterate characters with law degrees...

6. Character mechanics should reinforce the flavor of the genre, with genre-appropriate skills, names for attributes etc. Not much use for Occult in this game...