Topic: Thoughts on my upcoming campaign

[runequester]

For talents&flaws, going to mess with it a bit.
Everybody gets a random minor and a random lesser talent, plus a random minor flaw. Players can spend background options for random talents as in Character Law, but no picked ones.
(the extra talents will beef them up a little, but it'll only be 2-3 characters so thats okay)

Pondering whether to use some of the low-magic options.. its tempting, particularly as I want to do a LOTR'ish (i.e. classic quest fantasy) thing with orcs as the main enemy.

[Mungo]

Like RM2 with randomly roled background options, or?

[munchy]

As I experienced, especially in my own character concepts, how much picked talents and flaws can mess up a character or better put the game balance, a random distribution seems to be a wise choice. On the other hand, why not allow them to chooe one of the talents, maybe the minor one. I always resented gettting a magic talent when playing a non-magic user and the other way round. Let the players have at least some say in this. Otherwise you could really end up with completely useless  talents.

The other idea would be to talk to players about what they would like to have and then see how this can be achieved, even if not in full maybe to some extent, an extent that is helping but not unbalancing the game.

[Arioch]

I don't like very much random distribuition of talents, I prefer to let players design the character that they want to play (according to the setting).
You could have players write down a short background of their character and starting from that you choose what talents they get (buying them normally with racial Talent points).
Otherwise you could have players choose their talents, but banning some of them (for example, greater talents or special talents) and/or repricing those you feel are unbalanced. Obviously, as the GM, you can veto any of your players' choices...

[Fidoric]

I agree with Arioch. Random talents are not for me. Discussion between players and GM should be all that is needed to keep the PCs balanced and well-fitting the setting. needless to say, the GM has the final world in that.

[runequester]

Good points from all. I have one player that really enjoys random elements to character creation, and the rest arent concerned either way.

Mostly I want to avoid having to have players spend a lot of time reading when its the first game.

If a character gets killed or retired, then they'll be a bit more grounded in the system, and we'll let everyone pick and choose as they wish.

[markc]

RQ,
 Whay are players spending a lot of time reading?
MDC

[runequester]

It'd take a while to read through and pick out the talents that they wanted. This slowed down GURPS character creation (where its a bigger part, admittedly) quite a b it, and I foresee RM character creation will propably be pretty intense as it is

[Arioch]

Then don't let them read the talents: have they write down a short background and ask them what are the strenghts/particular features of their characters. Then you choose the talents for their character basing your choice on what they said. 

[runequester]

Thats a good idea

[Balhirath]

Then don't let them read the talents: have they write down a short background and ask them what are the strenghts/particular features of their characters. Then you choose the talents for their character basing your choice on what they said. 

I have done that the last few times I have made a new party, and it really works.
However I usually have the players roll some dices and write down the numbers, so that their character might have a special ability that they dont know about.
That is REALLY fun.
In the current group there is a character that rolled Shapechanger and I had a LOT of fun when he started to change into a young lion while he sleept  

The point is that it can really add a lot to a character when the player suddenly discover something about it. (As long as it is possitive, so that the GM does not ruin the character in the eyes of the players.)

[runequester]

Well, my players were keen on the random options, with provisions to reroll if you get something that is worthless to the profession.

We wanted to beef up the characters a bit, so I ended up giving them the Knight training package for free. That way, they are a bit more buff than level 1 would indicate without having to go through the troubles of creating higher level characters